


I Will...

by hellostarlight20



Series: The Adventures of Bad Wolf and the TARDIS...and their Doctor [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Bad Wolf, F/M, Fluff, Marriage, Romance, Telepathic Bond, life - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-11-03 21:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellostarlight20/pseuds/hellostarlight20
Summary: TelepathyAngstNot exactly a rewriteDimension Hopping RoseJE fixitHappy ending!





	1. Wait For You

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Mrs. Bertucci for her suggestions and comments that helped make this story better. Without her, it wouldn't have been nearly as good or as satisfying a read!

**_Wait For You..._ **

“Rose?” He shouted against the wall. His mind called out for hers, desperate to feel her touch, her telepathic presence. Her love.

“Doctor!”

He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, the blasted white wall that separated him from his wife. Pressing his hand to the weak spot between universes, he channeled every ounce of telepathic strength to punch through two universes.

“Are you safe?”

“Yeah.” She sniffed and suddenly her presence blossomed in his mind. “I’m safe. Here in the other Torchwood with Mum.”

“Jackie’s safe, too? Good. Good.” He closed his eyes against pain and rage and burning tears. “I love you, Rose.”

“I love you, too, my Doctor.” There was a pause and he didn’t know what she did or said, but almost instantly she returned. Her mind caressed his, a warm loving brush of her fingertips that tingled along his nerves. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” He kept his voice low and soothing even though he was alone and they spoke telepathically. “It wasn’t your fault the Dalek hit the lever.”

“I couldn’t hold on.” Her voice broke and he reached for her.

He didn’t care if UNIT was on its way to Torchwood Tower or that the Humans outside were still in a state of panic. All he cared about was Rose. He gently guided her into their telepathic bedroom, letting the soothing hum of the TARDIS and the muted colors of their room offer whatever comfort they could.

The Doctor lay on the bed with her and held her tightly, his arms around her body as reassuring to him as he knew they were to her. “Are you in pain? The pull—it had to hurt you.”

Rose shook her head against his chest. “I’m all right.” They both knew she lied. “Can you find a way back?” She pulled away just enough for him to see her. The Doctor gently wiped her tears away and kissed her softly. “Pete said the hoppers didn’t work anymore, but can you…?”

“I will.” The both knew his vow was a frantic attempt to appease the desperation choking them. “I will find you, my love.”

Rose grinned, and a little sparkle lightened her eyes. “I’m not lost.” A tear broke free but he caught it before it marred her cheek.

“No.” The word broke but he swallowed down his fear and reckless need to literally punch through the walls between universes. “You’re never lost to me.”

She pulled him to her and kissed him fiercely, hungrily, and he met her, hoping the kiss pushed his desolation far, far away.

“I’ll wait for you,” she promised. Rose pulled back and sniffed, hard, making an effort to control her tears, her voice. The Doctor had no such control but took strength from her.

Always had. Always would.

“I’ll find a way. I promise.”

“Will—” the room wobbled for a double beat of his hearts— “our connection survive?” Rose shuddered and licked her lips, eyes darting from his to his chest, and back again. “Will we still have this?”

“I don’t know.” The words tore from his lips, burning his throat, scorching his mind. “We still do now. But the walls closed—Pete’s right, I told him so after all.”

Rose’s watery chuckle tore at his hearts; he never wanted her to cry. Ever. He pulled her closer, the solid feel of her doing its best to soothe the pain welling up and choking him.

“Never wanted you to be so wrong before.”

“No.” He kissed her forehead. “No, me either. But I will find a way, Rose Tyler.” He pulled back. “I swear to you.”

“Doctor.” The look she gave him, heartbreaking and condescending and hopeful, nearly made him grin. Nearly. “Don’t go collapsing two universes.”

“Rose, for you I’d collapse all of time and space.”

They both knew he wouldn’t. Not really. _Well…_

“I love you, my hearts.”

Rose pressed her lips to his, hard and desperate. The Doctor shuddered in her arms and nearly cried, but masterfully contained himself. Well, nearly at least. Strong for her, he reminded himself. He had to be strong for Rose.

“Mum’s pulling me away. Says I’ve been standing at that wall for too long. I think she and Mickey are arguing.”

“You tell Mr. Mickey I said to take care of you.” He cupped her cheeks and brushed her hair off her face. Even in their telepathic haven, she looked exhausted and grief-stricken, mascara streaking over her pale cheeks.

“We both know I can take care of myself.”

“I know.” His voice broke. “But I need someone to look out for you. Don’t do anything reckless. I don’t care what Bad Wolf did to you, it didn’t make you invincible.”

“Promise me you won’t do anything reckless,” she shot back. Softer she asked, “You’ll work on finding a way through?”

They both noticed she didn’t promise not to be reckless. Course he hadn’t either. Honestly, the Doctor should’ve known she wouldn’t have. That wasn’t his Rose. Always rushing in, his wife, usually to save him.

“I promise.” He kissed her again, wishing it was her physical body in his arms but grasping what he had with his love with both hands.

“I love you,” Rose sobbed.

“And I you, my hearts.”

When the Doctor retreated from their telepathic bedroom, he was alone. Alone in a white room he wanted to burn to the ground. Only the mournful wail of the TARDIS soothed his battered soul.

When Rose retreated from their telepathic connection into the eerie quiet of a new universe, she saw Mickey standing with his back to her, arms crossed over his chest. Jackie stood next to her, looking heartbroken and concerned and angry. Pete and Jake were arguing with Mickey who ignored them all.

She had never loved her family as much as she did in that moment. If the walls didn’t completely close and she and the Doctor retained their bond, she’d tell him about this.

“Micks.” Her voice cracked, a battered whisper of a sound.

Mickey turned immediately and hugged her tight. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.” Her control wavered and splintered. Her mum grasped her hand, shattering what semblance of control Rose thought she retained. “Let’s go—just. I can’t be here anymore.”

“Then you going to tell me when you got married?” He nodded to her left hand and the thin band of metal she wore with deep blue stones that had reminded her of the TARDIS.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Rose promised. “And if Mum has her mobile on her, we can even show you pictures.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t invite me,” Mickey joked, but his voice cracked and Rose’s knees gave out. He caught her round the middle and she gratefully allowed him, unsure how she was going to walk out of here on her own.

“Was the TARDIS there, at least?” he asked.

Rose looked at him askance. “Course She was.”

He nodded as if he wanted to say more but Rose had no idea what that more could possibly be. She knew he and the TARDIS shared a bond, they played video games together and Mickey often talked to the ship as if She were his best mate.

“Your connection,” Jackie said and wrapped her hand around Rose’s arm. “It’s still—”

“Yeah, Mum.”

“What’d he say?” Jackie asked as they followed Pete and Jake out of the room, the horrible, desolate room on the wrong side of forever.

“He’s going to try.”

“Thought the walls was closed,” Mickey whispered, walking on her other side as if to make sure she had all the support she needed.

This world closed in on her, crushing her chest and suffocating her in its void. But oh, she loved her family. Frantic, she squeezed Jackie’s hand, needing her solid presence as desperately as she needed the Doctor’s. Rose reached for him, his love a comforting brush over her skin like a cool breeze on a warm day. 

“Never say never, Mickey.” She managed a smile or thought she did, but from the look on her best mate’s face knew her lips didn’t really work like she wanted them to.

“Well, if anyone can, it’s the Doctor.” Jackie nodded as if her words set it in stone.

Rose laughed. Then sank to the ground and sobbed.


	2. …always feel the same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have messed this chapter up and posted chapter 3 instead. Sorry!

**_…always feel the same_ **

“I can’t come through.” His voice echoed around her, carried on the wind, brought to her feet on the sand. Dropped in her heart like shards of glass.

“I know.” She tried to smile but her face hurt. “But I’m glad you brought me here anyway. I love seeing you in our bedroom, but this is—” Rose shook her head. “Honestly I’m not sure if it’s better or worse.”

The Doctor tried to smile, but it cracked around the edges. Reaching out to touch him, to smooth the line between his brows, the deep indentations of his dimples, she stopped a hair’s breadth from his hologram.

“I miss you.”

“I love you.”

They spoke at the same time and their laughter carried on the wind, pushing between universes.

“I’ll never stop looking, Rose. I promise.”

“I know.” She felt like vomiting. Still, she pushed it all back and tried to think of something she hadn’t already told him. “So this place, it’s in Norway. Translates to Bad Wolf Bay.”

Even as a grainy black and white hologram he paled. “I—I but— _what_? What does that even _mean_?”

“I don’t know,” Rose admitted and pushed her hair out of her way. “But I’m sure it means something. Bad Wolf always does.”

The Doctor licked his lips and nodded to the trio behind her. “How’s Jackie?”

“Morning sickness and all. She’s pretty excited, though.”

“I’m sorry I’ll miss it,” he whispered and tore his gaze from her mum. “But I’m glad you’re here with her.”

“Gonna be here a long time,” she reminded him. Needlessly. And a little cruelly.

Rose hadn’t meant to say that. Not that she hadn’t thought it, almost every second of every day since he told her a week or so ago he couldn’t navigate the TARDIS through the last remaining pinprick between universes. But she didn’t want to hurt either of them any more than they already hurt.

Straightening her shoulders, she sniffed back her pain and tears. “At least I’ll be able to look after the little one.”

“I’m not giving up, Rose.”

She only nodded and tried to speak around the lump choking her. “I won’t, either. If this world’s Torchwood managed to create the hoppers to begin with, maybe—”

“Just don’t go collapsing two universes,” he warned.

They both heard the thread of desperate hope in his voice.

“When this hole closes—” Rose couldn’t finish the sentence. Of course she didn’t need to, but she had to ask it anyway.

“There’re still gaps,” the Doctor rushed to assure her. “Not holes like this, not nearly big enough for the TARDIS to slip through or…or, well, even a transmission like this one. But there are gaps. That’s how the Cybermen pushed their way through the first time.”

“Like they found a small thread and pulled until it was big enough to create a hole? Then they worked the hole and punched through?”

“Exactly.” He looked proud and grinned again, that watery, _I’m trying to be strong_ , grin. “But don’t you go trying it!”

Rose snorted and held as still as possible to prevent herself from stepping closer. From reaching for him. From begging. “I won’t. Look what happened there—found a bunch of Daleks. No thanks, I’ll be careful.”

“I love you, my hearts.”

“I love you, too, my Doct—”

He disappeared. Rose’s breath stopped and her mind frantically reached for his, searching the multiverse for her other half.

“I’m here,” his telepathic presence promised. Faint and distant, and not at all the comfort she hoped for. “I’ll always be here. Always, you hear me? I’ll always be with you. I’ll always love you. That’ll never change.”

“Don’t be alone,” she hurried to say. “I wanted to tell you that before—before you—” Rose shook her head, either her real body did or her telepathic one or both. “I want you to find someone to travel with, you hear? Don’t be alone.”

“They’ll never be you.”

She nearly laughed. Tried to scoff. Turned and instead of the bleak Norwegian beach, their warm bedroom shimmered into view, the TARDIS humming welcomingly in the background, the beckoning embrace of home. Still not as strong as Rose was used to, but it was something and she held it close to her heart.

“Of course not, I don’t expect you to marry each of your companions.”

His laughter, wan and feeble, nonetheless echoed in her head. Those little pinpricks between universes must still be enough, then. Rose sagged to the floor—or the beach—in relief.

“I’m here.” His strong hands helped her up but Rose didn’t know if she stood on the beach, too. “I’ve got you, my hearts.” He held her close, tenderly, as if she might break. Or he might. Rose clung to him, unashamed of her weakness; the Doctor shuddered, tightened his arms around her.

It wasn’t weakness to admit she needed him—and that he needed her.

“I’ll figure out what Bad Wolf Bay means,” he swore, large cool hands splayed on her back, gently caressing her. “Kind of an unusual name for a beach, Norwegian or otherwise.”

“Bad Wolf has always been a way to guide myself home.” Rose pulled back just enough to meet his gaze. Her fingers clenched beneath his jacket on his shirt and she didn’t care this was literally all in her mind. She needed his comfort. “Maybe the TARDIS knows something I don’t. Or maybe when we were Bad Wolf we saw something.”

The Doctor brushed her hair from her cheeks and pressed his lips to hers. “I’ll find out. I prom…ise?”

“Doctor?” Rose looked at him. He didn’t look at her rather over her shoulder. She turned, but of course only saw their bedroom and couldn’t see what he did. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“There’s someone in the TARDIS!”

“What? What do you mean, _there’s someone in the TARDIS_? How?”

“What?!”

And that was how the Doctor found Donna Noble inside his TARDIS as he orbited a supernova while trying to speak to his wife.

Rose looked up at her mum and Mickey, standing in front of her as she knelt on the hard, wet sand. The cold seeped through her jeans, numbed her fingers until they turned white. She couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t feel anything.

Pete stood behind them and looked more than a little uncertain. She’d told him of her telepathic bond with the Doctor and while Mickey acted like he already knew, and her mum of course had some months to get used to the idea, Pete only looked confused. And vaguely horrified. He’d nodded as if having a telepathic bond with one’s husband was normal, however, and hadn’t brought it up again.

Mickey helped her stand and wrapped his arm around her waist. Jackie wrapped her arms around her shoulders and kissed her frozen cheek.

“What happened, sweetheart?” Jackie stroked her hair off her face, but the wind insisted it didn’t care about her mum’s tender touch. Rose did and valiantly tried to hold back tears.

“The h-hole c-c-closed and his—his hologram ended,” Rose stuttered out, cold and devastated and trying not to cry.

“But your connection, it’s still there?” Jackie’s worried gaze focused on her and Rose wrapped her arms around her mum, shaking.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can still feel him.”

“What did you mean?” Mickey asked as he herded them off the desolate beach.

Rose never wanted to see a beach again.

“Hmm?”

“You said _There’s someone on the TARDIS_ —what did you mean?” Mickey opened the door to the SUV and bundled her inside.

Collapsing on the seat, disoriented and confused and not entirely sure her limbs remembered how to work, she waited until everyone was in the vehicle. When she spoke, she didn’t look at them, but out the window at the ocean continually lapping the shore. There was a metaphor there, she knew it, but her mind was as cold as her fingers.

“When the hole closed,” she whispered into the silence, “we still had our connection.”

“And someone just—what?” Jackie demanded from beside her. “Beamed into the TARDIS?”

Rose snorted, it was weak and listless, but a smile did try to tug on her lips. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window, letting the heat warm her. It never would, no matter how much hotter this universe’s Earth was compared to her own or how high Pete cranked the heat in the car.

“I don’t know.” She prodded the Doctor but he only sent back a faint kiss and a promise he was being _very, very careful, honest, Rose! I won’t do anything stupid, my hearts._

Rose didn’t believe him, but from the distracted way he kissed her, knew he was in the middle of running and knowing him, running for his life. She’d corner him, or telepathically do so, later.

“Could the supernova have amplified the TARDIS?” Pete asked, the first words he’d spoken since they left the hotel at five this morning.

Rose played the question around in her head but finally had to admit, “I don’t know. The TARDIS, she works differently than anything we have, even here at Torchwood. She’s her own creation, far as I can tell, grown not made.”

“Still,” Pete continued and looked as Mickey as he drove off the beach—probably wasn’t entirely legal, driving on the beach to begin with—and onto the gravel road. “It’s worth looking into.”

“Maybe not a supernova,” Mickey said. “But we do have rift activity here. Remember that rift in Cardiff, Rose? Worth a try.”


	3. …promise you forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since I may have accidently posted chapter 3 last week instead of 2, be warned it's all fixed now!

**_…promise you forever_ **

“Oh, Doctor,” Rose sighed. She looked down at him, dressed only in his trousers, and lying, rumpled, in their bed, and didn’t know whether to be exasperated—or hit him. Again.

He eyed her, tired and strained, his hand grasping hers as if afraid to let go; his dimples dug into his cheeks and his freckles stood out starkly on his pale face. He looked haunted, and Rose, wearing only his dress shirt, resettled herself on their bed and stroked her fingertips over his face, along his forehead, down his cheeks, over and over.

“I didn’t mean to, Rose,” he promised. “It wasn’t like that, I swear! It was a genetic transfer, that’s all!”

“I know.” Rose sighed and cupped his cheek, pressing her lips to his as if to erase the other woman’s touch. “But does Martha?”

“I told her,” he insisted.

“What about your ring?” She lifted his left hand where he wore the ring she’d given him when they exchanged Earth vows in front of the judge and her mum. (And the TARDIS, sitting innocuously in the registrar’s office.)

“When I was in hospital, they asked if I was married.” His voice hollowed and his fingers tightened around hers. “Wanted to call my wife. I said I was—that I was—” his voice smashed into shards around them.

“Oh.” Widowed.

He said he was widowed. Martha thought she, Rose, was dead. Her chest felt like it was going to cave into itself, but Rose tried to understand. Really, she did. Martha only knew what the Doctor told her, she didn’t know he lied.

No doubt she thought he kissed her either on the rebound or—well, it didn’t matter did it.

“I miss you, Rose. My hearts. So much.”

“I miss you, too.” Rose settled back on his chest, letting his double heartbeat calm her.

Even if her physical head wasn’t physically on his chest, they’d shared a telepathic link for long enough that her body believed it real. That was enough. For now. It had to be.

“You have to tell Martha, though. If not about us, then at least that you’re not interested. You have to make it clear, no more mixed signals.”

The Doctor sighed again and wrapped his arms around her, holding her to his chest as if his life depended on it. “I will.”

“But she’s good, yeah?” Rose asked, fishing for more about this Martha and maybe—just maybe—trying not to compare herself with the newbie. The newbie who was going to be a _doctor_.

“She is.” His smile came clear through. “Very observant, she’s a star.”

Rose laughed and raised her head to kiss him. “Where are you now?”

“Hmm? Oh, we’re in bed.”

“Doctor!” She jerked out of his arms and sat up.

“What? I didn’t mean it like that!”

Rose laughed again and poked his chest. “You’re lying in bed with a woman you kissed not 24 hours ago and you don’t think she’ll get the wrong impression?”

“Ah. Well…” He tugged his ear and looked sheepish. “I never thought about it.” He sobered and looked at her. “I only ever really think about you.”

Well that certainly melted her.

“You’re all I think about, too.” She kissed him, soft and gentle and pushed all her love for her amazing husband through their link. Sitting up, she smirked and added mischievously, “Well, not all the time. Sometimes I think about Mickey’s theory on the rift.”

The Doctor laughed, as he was meant to. “Yeah, but that’s to find your way back here.” He smirked and preened. “To me.”

“Course it’s not,” Rose scoffed. “It’s really to be with the TARDIS again.” Even in their telepathic bedroom, the TARDIS hummed delightedly. Rose grinned up at the ship and sent a wave of love to Her. “See? She knows, too.”

He grabbed her around the waist and tugged her back onto bed, wrapping his body around hers. Nuzzling her hair, he cupped her breast through his shirt and sighed contentedly against her neck, a cool puff of air. “What are you doing?”

“I’m in the lab office,” she admitted. Rose covered his hands with hers, nestling closer to him. It was never close enough. “Trying to study for tomorrow’s test.”

“I could help with that.”

“Help?” She giggled and turned her head to look at him. “Or distract?”

“Hmm.” His hands glided down her sides then up again, beneath the shirt. “Both?”

“How long has it been for you?” Rose whispered.

“Too long.”

“Doctor—how long?”

“Since we last—since Norway?” He didn’t pull back but pulled her closer. “177 days and 15 hours.”

“It’s been longer for me,” Rose admitted but then he probably already knew that. “How is it we keep in sync when our universes aren’t?”

“Oh, well, that’s because we’re bonded, a telepathic bond doesn’t really—oops, gotta go! Screaming in the middle of the night is never a good sign.”

Rose opened her eyes and stared at the lab. She really did have studying to do, but with the Doctor’s phantom touch still tinging through her, hadn’t the focus to do much of anything. Still, she did have a test tomorrow and she did plan to pass it. Spectacularly.

Unfortunately, later when the Doctor shut out all telepathic contact, her head throbbed too hard to concentrate.

_“Oh, big mistake. Because that name keeps me fighting!”_

He’d screamed those words to the Carrionites, his hearts pounding wildly as he tried to keep Rose safe. The Doctor had no idea if it were possible for the other species to tap into his mind and follow the telepathic thread to Rose, but he sure as hell wasn’t taking any chances.

Now, as he and Martha walked back to the TARDIS, he slowly opened himself back to Rose and offered an apology to her for hurting her so badly. Her mind slept, but, as always, accepted his presence. Grinning slightly, he kissed her goodnight and promised to be there when she woke.

Forever.

The Doctor brought Martha to New New York. He had a vague plan to tell her about Rose. To be fair, the constant ache between his hearts for missing his wife might’ve influenced his choice of locales, he was feeling nostalgic, and frankly didn’t want to tell Martha on the TARDIS where _everything_ reminded him of Rose.

The Old Girl missed Rose, too. And it wasn’t that the TARDIS didn’t like Martha, far as the Doctor could tell She did, but talking about Rose while in their home didn’t sit well. As if he talked of a (dead) wife and not one very much alive and still with him. Just not physically.

Of course that was before kidnappers and choking smog and the Face of Boe.

“I lied.” He tried to tell Martha about Gallifrey, did his best, and wondered how his home world might segue into Rose. Because he’d lied to Martha about so much in such a short time. And Rose was right, he had to tell Martha the truth about his wife, at least.

“I’m sorry,” Martha said and sounded sad for him. Not angry he lied, but…understanding, the Doctor supposed. “Was your wife from Gallifrey?”

“Rose?” He shook his head and looked at his ring, turning the band round and round. “No. She’s Human.” He took a deep breath, though technically speaking he didn’t need to, and met Martha’s gaze. “Rose isn’t dead, Martha. She’s…lost.”

He paused and felt Rose telepathically take his hand, kiss the back of it, and hold tight between hers. She was involved in other things, he could tell by the slight distance in her presence. It didn’t matter, her touch helped, soothed, gave him strength.

Always had.

“The—Canary Wharf. She—we were there, and we tried—we tried to close the void, she—her lever was—anyway.” He swallowed and sat up, dragging his hands down his face. “She’s not dead. But she _is_ in a parallel world. Trapped there. I can’t—I can’t reach her.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor.” It started to rain again, but neither moved from their impromptu circle. “Why did you—” she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat but before he could even begin to think of how to tell Martha about their telepathic connection—or if he should—she continued.

“Is that why you sometimes stare into space? You’re—you’re…searching for her?”

The Doctor opened his mouth. Snapped it closed. Martha Jones, hadn’t he told Rose she was observant? He grinned slightly and pushed back his anger and loss. He hadn’t lost everything. He still had his beloved ship and he still had Rose, despite her current physical distance.

“We—we’re connected, Martha. Telepathically.” The word cut his hearts and scraped his throat, but he admitted the truth to his new friend. “And even though the walls between universes have sealed tight, there are still pinpricks. Little spaces that allow our bond to slip through. We can still communicate with each other.”

She looked shocked, and he couldn’t blame her. Telepathy for Humans was one of those things seen on telly or read about in stories. A great idea, fun to speculate about, maybe even wish for, but no one could ever truly comprehend the scope of it.

_The intimacy._

Until they shared their minds, their thoughts, their essence with another.

“You can still talk to her?”

“Yes.”

Martha opened and closed her mouth a few times then nodded. “That explains so much,” she muttered. “Well. I’m glad.” She offered a smile, a faint curl of her lips. “I’m glad she’s alive and I’m very happy to hear you can still communicate with her.”

“Me, too, Martha.” He stood and turned for the TARDIS. “Me, too.”

“What do you think he meant?” Rose asked him later when Martha was showering from her smoggy adventure. _“You are not alone. They will return.”_

“I don’t know.”

She snorted and he craned his neck to look down at her, but didn’t—couldn’t—release her. “Let’s presume—or hope—one of the ‘they’ at least means me, yeah? We both know one way or another I’m coming back to you.”

He pulled her tighter and kissed the top of her head. “Yes. You are.”

“Do you think he—is the Face of Boe male?” Rose turned her head to kiss the underside of his jaw, fingers toying with his. “Do you think he meant the Time Lords?”

The Doctor shuddered. “I hope not,” he fervently whispered.

“Yeah.” Rose turned in his arms and as much as he didn’t want her to see him just now—or to ever discuss the return of the Time Lords—she left him no choice. She never had, not even at the beginning of their relationship.

Then again, their first date had been the end of the world and him telling her he was alone. She hadn’t been confident in her questioning, and of course he’d ignored her at first, but she’d asked over chips and soda. In the end, as they walked back to the TARDIS hand-in-hand, the Doctor had admitted his search for his people.

How, after the Time War, he’d looked for anyone. Even his—Susan. Even Susan hadn’t been spared; she’d fought for the life of the universe alongside Romana in the end. But they’d both, Susan and Romana, had given their blessing to end that damnable war.

It hadn’t been until they meet the Dalek in Utah that he admitted his role in the war. As she had when he first told her about his people and the war, Rose held him when he admitted he—ended it.

Now, wrapped tight in Rose’s arms, he sniffed back choking, oppressive grief and tears. No, he didn’t want Rose to know about his past or about his actions. 

The again, he knew what he was getting into when they bonded. Sharing every part of himself hadn’t terrified the Doctor as he always expected it to.

“I’ll be here, Doctor,” Rose promised. “I promised you forever and I mean it.”


	4. …wait for you

**_…wait for you_ **

“I want to talk to Rose.” Martha crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

The Doctor eyed her and wondered if he needed to step out of arm’s length. He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. He could still see the Dalek disappearing, blinking out of this time and into—another.

_One. All it takes is one._

“What?” He demanded. “Why?” Then he shook his head. “You can’t. It’s not like there’s a phone line between here and—and, well, her. We share a telepathic connection, you can’t just tap into it like a party line!”

“Then I want you to tell her this from me and I want you to tell her exactly. You understand me, mister?”

He leaned back slightly, just in case Martha’s version of talk was in any way similar to Jackie’s. True, his mother-in-law had only slapped him that once, but it was a memorable once. “What is it?”

“No. I want you to promise me first.”

Against his better judgement the Doctor felt his head nodding as if he always planned to agree to Martha’s request. The TARDIS hummed encouragingly in the back of his mind, but Martha nodded as if his ship spoke to her. Eyeing the Time Rotor as if it personally affronted him, he looked back to Martha.

“All right. I promise.”

“I want you to tell Rose to smack you one.”

“What?” He yelped. “I’m not telling her—”

“And I want you to tell her why,” Martha continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I want you to tell her about that stupid stunt you pulled in the theater with the Daleks. Trying to get yourself killed you were! And then what? What would I do in 1930 New York? Assuming the Daleks didn’t kill me, too! Kill _all_ of us. The entire world! Stranded there—or even in here with the TARDIS, if I managed to make it back, I wouldn’t be able to fly Her.”

The TARDIS hummed again as if to say of course She’d let Martha fly her home, or activate the emergency program to take her home again. Martha glanced at the Time Rotor, a slight smile twitching her lips, but almost immediately looked at him again. Well, glared at him again.

The Doctor opened his mouth then snapped it closed. “Rose is taking a test now,” he hedged.

“I’m sure you’ll still be awake when she’s finished.”

“Martha, I wouldn’t have—the TARDIS, She’d have taken you home.”

Martha didn’t look convinced, her gaze flicking from him to the Time Rotor and back again. “Hmm. I’m showering—another lovely walk through the sewers, thank you—and sleeping.” She spun on her heel and stalked off. “You better tell Rose!”

The Doctor had no such plans, of course. He was not about to tell his wife he had a moment of weakness and willingly gave himself up to the Daleks as sort of a sacrificial lamb. Or Time Lord. Sacrificial Time Lord. That instead of keeping the flame of hope alive, the one Rose seemed to nourish so effortlessly, he let it splutter and die. Martha was right—he deserved a slap.

Not for offering his life to the Daleks—well all right that, too—but for not believing in Rose.

“I believe in you,” he told her. “I believe in us.”

“What are the universal coordinates of the Cardiff rift?” Rose asked, clearly distracted. “And the Earth ones, too, just in case.”

“Are you thinking of using the rift to link universes?” he asked, grateful as ever to talk shop and not the foolishness of his own grief and loneliness.

“That’s part of Mickey’s theory,” Rose agreed. “But I don’t think the rifts act like a wormhole. They’re just energy, yeah? Like they take the energy from the Earth and the universe and amplify it?”

“More or less, yes.” He tugged his ear and stood next to her at her desk in their bedroom. Looking over her proverbial shoulder, he studied the calculations she and Mr. Mickey had worked out.

It’d taken a while before they strengthened their bond enough to ‘see’ through the other’s eyes, but desperation begat necessity—or something like that.

“Move your hand, love.” He settled his own hands on her shoulders and worked out the knots tightening her muscles. Rose sighed into his touch, melting into his chest as easily as their minds linked to each other’s.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

The Doctor kissed the top of her head and continued to study her notes, though he already read them twice and calculated five different ways her plan to cross universes could go wrong. And by wrong he meant splatting Rose into the universal walls or losing herself in the Void or being torn apart by gravimetric waves.

The horrors of his own fears danced through his mind. Unable to look at her, he took her pen and scratched out several calculations and wrote in his own.

“This still won’t work,” he warned and retuned his hands to her shoulders, digging his thumbs into her muscles. “The walls are still closed and punching through these pinpricks is a surefire way to destroy all of creation.”

“Hmm.” Rose sighed and tilted her head to look at him. “I’m not looking to destroy the world or recreate the Big Bang, ta. I just want to make sure, when the time’s right, I can jump through.”

He leaned down and kissed her. “And when you do, my hearts, I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“Doctor?” Rose stood and her work papers faded away, replaced by the gentle hum of the TARDIS and the soothing beat of her strong, Human, heart.

“I—it’s been hard. Here, alone.”

“Martha?” Rose asked, sharp and slightly afraid.

“She’s still here,” he rushed to assure her. “But—well—” he didn’t want to, but ended up hurriedly telling her about the Daleks and falling into despair. “You’re so strong, Rose. I thought—well, I thought I could go on like before. Just traveling, me and the TARDIS, and it wouldn’t be any different. But—it’s not—I mean it is, different I mean. Not the same.”

“I told you I didn’t want you marrying all your companions,” she admonished. But her hand was soft on his cheek and her lips gentle on his.

“It’s different,” he admitted. “I know you’re alive and we share our minds, and our link, and I thought that’d be enough.”

“What makes you think it’s enough for me?” Now her voice was sharp, angry.

The Doctor opened his mouth then immediately snapped it closed. “It’s not,” he realized. “I mean I knew that but—and you have your family and I guess—well, I guess I hoped you…”

“That I what? Didn’t need you to _breathe_ because I had Mum and Mickey and little Tony? Because I returned to school?”

“No. Rose, no.” He tried to hug her, tried to stop her words because they hurt. Cut through his hearts so precisely and showed him how selfish he was. Taking her compassion and not returning it, thinking he was the only one broken and lost.

“You think I haven’t wanted to give up? Curl into a ball and cry and never see the light of day again? You think I can just sit there and enjoy Mum and Tony without thinking how it’d be like if you were beside me? Or go to Torchwood every single day and not remember how that damn place literally pulled us apart?”

“You’ve always been my strength,” he admitted. His voice broke but he pushed on. “I’m sorry I haven’t been yours.” The Doctor did hold her then. Tugged her into his arms and just…held her.

Rose sighed into his touch and relaxed, winding her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. He knew she listened to his hearts and that the sound soothed her as much as her single heart soothed him. 

With as much passion as he promised when they bonded, when they married, he vowed, “I’ll be better. I’ll always be here for you, I swear. I’ll wait for you until the universe ends. You’re not alone in this, Rose. I swear.”

“I know, Doctor.” Rose pulled back just enough to lean up and offer a small, broken smile. “I know. Don’t give up, yeah?”

“I won’t. Not on you. Never.”


	5. ...remember you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would not exist without Mrs. Bertucci. Actually, the entire story might not have been finished without her! A thousand thanks, dear beta!

**_…remember you_ **

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor groused, “even separated by universes the two of you are ganging up on me!”

Martha laughed as they explored the darkened landscape. “Outnumbered you are, Doctor.”

Which was when everything went to hell and he and Martha raced back to the TARDIS as if the hounds of hell were on their tails. Which, in a way, they were.

“What about Rose?” Martha demanded as the Chameleon Arch descended from the ceiling. “Has that always been up there?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted and hoped it was obvious he was talking about Rose and not the Chameleon Arch. “Not like I ever went through this before,” he snapped.

“Hey, don’t snap at me, I’m worried about your link with your wife.” But Martha’s voice shook and he tempered his own fear.

The Doctor ignored the arch, the TARDIS’s Cloister Bell shrilly reminding them they needed to hurry, the monitor unhelpfully tracking the Family’s progress in following them, and crossed the grating to Martha. He took his friend by the arms and looked down at her.

“Martha, I’m going to put my Time Lord mind into a watch.” He grimaced. “Not really sure how that’s going to work, but The Other swore it did.”

She looked at him askance, but seemed to understand now wasn’t the time to question him about other Time Lords mysteriously called The Other. “And Rose?”

“I’ll warn her,” he promised.

“If your Time Lordy self is in the watch—” she nodded to where the innocuous fob watch sat on the console—“can I communicate with you?”

He opened his mouth and closed it a couple time. “I’ve no idea.”

“You’re no help,” Martha grumbled but once again her voice wavered.

Despite the panic gripping his hearts and the uncertainty about communicating with Rose, the Doctor paused. He rounded the console and took Martha by the shoulders. He forced his voice to sound as calm as he didn’t feel and ordered his lips into a smile, however brief it lasted.

“Go pack,” he told her and squeezed her shoulders. “The TARDIS will set out what you need.”

As if in agreement, the TARDIS brightened the lights. Martha glanced at the Time Rotor and her lips twitched in what might’ve been a smile. If he was being generous. Martha nodded and raced down the hall to her room. The Doctor didn’t watch her leave, but looked at the Time Rotor and closed his eyes.

“What do you think, Old Girl? Think our bond is strong enough to survive?”

He received a mournful wail in reply.

“Take care of her, yeah?” The Doctor opened his eyes. “Rose and Martha.”

 ********  
Martha Jones, late of London, resident doctor at Royal Hope Hospital, companion to the Doctor, and co-conspirator with the TARDIS, looked around the Edwardian all boys’ school and shuddered.

She hated this place.

She hated the air and the dust, she hated the dark wood banisters that screamed wealthy snobs and she hated the stupid floors that refused to stay clean. She hated the food and the gardens and the air and the very reason they were here in the first place.

 _It’ll be fine_ , he said. _No need to worry_ , he said. _It’s just three months_ , he said.

Martha slipped her hand into her apron pocket and brushed her fingertips over the watch. At least the Doctor listened to them—she, the TARDIS, and Rose—and hadn’t left his fob watch _with his Time Lord consciousness_ lying about in his rooms, completely unguarded. Daft man, thinking nothing would happen to it.

Like teenage Edwardian boys weren’t a bunch of petty little thieves with sticky fingers and wandering hands, the lot of them.

“I hate this place,” she thought to the Doctor as the pad of her finger traced the intricate Gallifreyan circles over the watch.

The Doctor’s voice—his real voice, not the less compelling, flatter one John Smith used—laughed at her. Well, not at her, Martha conceded. But he sounded a hell of a lot happier than she’d ever heard him. She had to wonder if this was how he sounded around Rose all the time.

“It’s just another adventure, Martha, think of it that way.”

“Stop it,” Rose’s voice snapped.

That had certainly taken time to get used to. Hearing another voice whenever she thought/spoke to the Doctor. However it did it, the watch channeled her own thoughts and speech to the Doctor’s Time Lord consciousness which was still connected via telepathic marriage bond to Rose.

“Martha, you’re doing great. I know it’s hard, not having any support, being in this place, but you really are a star.” Rose’s voice, which had a strange layer to it Martha associated with the TARDIS, soothed her as she walked into the kitchens on a far-too-early weekday morning.

“Rose is right, Martha,” the Doctor’s voice chimed in, soberer now. “I may—” and Martha clearly saw him tugging his ear in embarrassed consternation—“have not thought this all the way through.”

“I have,” Martha mumbled. “And being in the middle of Farringham nowhere is better than modern day London. If the Family does find us, at least the damage will be minimal.” She sighed and accepted Mr. Smith’s tray, forcing her fingers from the watch.

It wouldn’t do for anyone to see her with it, anyway. She’d be accused of stealing and instantly dismissed—if not beaten first. Did they still do that to servants in 1913? It didn’t matter; even if she took refuge in the TARDIS, she’d still be too far from the Doctor (Mr. Smith, whatever) to be of any help.

“Listen to me.” She sighed as she walked up to Mr. Smith’s room. “Talking about damage being minimal. I’m a doctor. I help people. Not calculate minimal damage. _Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing…_ ”

Martha pushed open the door to John Smith’s room and watched him stretch in the brilliant sunlight coming through the windows.

“Ah, Martha, thank you.”

His wedding ring glinted off the sun, a testament to how deeply he loved Rose, no matter the man. He took the tray from her and set it on the desk, staring down at it as if he never saw it before. Martha wondered what he did see or think, but then he was moving around the room again.

“It’s Christmas in a few months,” he said, voice low and broken.

Martha stilled. She knew that voice, heard it when he—the Doctor—first spoke of Rose, of his planet. Now, she watched John Smith wander the room, robe over his ridiculous pinstriped jimjams. She’d snickered the first time she’d seen them, mentally laughing at the Doctor’s propensity for pinstripes.

“It is,” she said carefully.

Turning from him, she busied herself with straightening. Until this blasted place and time, Martha had never been one to _clean_ when she was nervous. She couldn’t decide if it was a habit she wanted to translate into her other life or one she hoped might die a well-deserved death in 1913, never to be resurrected again.

“Are you going home to your family?”

She opened her mouth then snapped it closed. Last she spoke to her mum, it’d been Election Day, May, 2007 and Francine had no idea her daughter hadn’t been at her flat.

“I haven’t decided,” she admitted. “You?”

“I—no.” He looked up at her, broken, defeated shattered. “Where would I go?”

Oh. Right. “Away from here,” she tried but even to her own ears the words sounded feeble and useless. Helpless.

Her fingers dipped into her apron pocket again and she brushed them over the watch. Rose’s warm support slid up her arm and curled around her heart, giving her strength. No wonder the Doctor fell in love with her—no wonder John Smith looked so lost, so dead and vulnerable without her.

“This’ll be—well.” He looked back at the tray and picked at his watery eggs. “My first Christmas without Rose.”

At the words, barely a breath of sound, Martha’s hand clenched around the watch. One by one, she forced her fingers to release the thing and slowly withdrew her hand from the pocket and smoothed down her heavy dress.

“Yeah.” She licked her lips and cleared her throat. “I know. I’m sorry.”

He sniffed and it reminded her so strongly of the Doctor, Martha thought someone punched her in the stomach. Maybe they weren’t so different as she first believed. Maybe she let her telepathic conversations with Rose and the Doctor cloud her view of John Smith before her.

“I still dream about her.” Another breath of sound, far more broke than the previous words.

“Oh?” Her brain raced for more than that, but she had nothing.

“I dream we’re running.” He looked down at his empty hand and Martha tangled her fingers together to stop herself from reaching for the watch. Or for him.

No matter how much she hated this place, how she disagreed with the Doctor’s choice of locales and time periods, or this ridiculous plan that clearly had not been fully thought out, she cared for the Doctor. She hated seeing him—or John Smith—in such pain. Maybe keeping the watch and being able to, peripherally at least, tap into Rose and the Doctor’s telepathic party line hadn’t been the brightest idea she and the TARDIS ever came up with.

If John kept the watch, would it bring him comfort? Solace? Would being part of the telepathic commune the Doctor shared with Rose ease his grief or add to it?

“Hand in hand,” John Smith continued. “She’s wearing the most scandalous clothing, but she’s so beautiful. Laughing.” He cleared his throat and looked like he wanted to stop, but Martha crossed the room and rested her hand on his arm. “She’s laughing. And alive.”

Tears clogged her throat and Martha tried to tell him not to grieve, that everything would be all right. The words stuck in her throat. “She loved you so much, Mr. Smith.” Though she had no idea how John thought Rose died, she had to say something. “Her last thoughts were about you.”

“I know you and she were close, Martha.” He squeezed her hand then stepped away, walking to the window.

Martha knew this reaction, too. The Doctor did it often, whenever he missed Rose’s hand in his or said something Martha knew was meant for Rose. She didn’t know how, but she knew he timed their adventures to coincide with Rose’s sleep in the other universe. However he did it, he wanted Martha’s sleeping hours to spend with Rose’s waking hours.

She didn’t blame him and didn’t hold it against him. She cared more deeply for him than she should for a man desperately in love with his wife, but Martha had grown to care for Rose, too. Through the Doctor’s stories and the TARDIS’s photos, Martha felt as if she traveled with the Doctor and Rose. Not just her memory.

“I dream we’re traveling the world,” he said to the window but Martha knew better. He really spoke to Rose. “Such strange places, completely unrealistic. I dreamt we met Charles Dickens!”

Martha forced a half laugh. “And did you see ghosts?”

He looked over his shoulder, and even with the sunlight at his back, she saw his look. As if she read his mind “Yes, strange blue creatures, not at all like _The Signal-man_ ’s specters.”

Martha had no idea what the signal-man was or how it related to a ghost, but merely nodded. Given her experience with Shakespeare and witches, she believed Rose and the Doctor saw Charles Dickens and met ghosts. Of course they had.

Maybe the school library had a collection of Dickens. Maybe they’d even let her borrow it.

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “I need to—duties and all. I have to get—” Martha stepped back, fingers once more brushing the watch. “I am sorry about Rose, Mr. Smith.” Oops, was she supposed to call Rose Mrs. Smith? Too late now. “She loves you very much.”

Cursing her grammatical slip, Martha hurried out of the room. She gripped the watch and, uncaring what time it was in Rose’s universe, muttered, “This is the worst plan ever.”

“It’s not one of my best,” the Doctor’s quiet, apologetic voice echoed in her head. “But I won’t be responsible for another genocide.” He took in a deep breath and Martha recognized his words—and wondered again what he meant by them. “If this plan keeps the Family from taking my life and using my regeneration energy to conquer the multiverse, then it’s worth it.”

She deflated. “Yes. All right. Fine. You’re right in that. But next time, I’m making the plan.” She stormed downstairs to the kitchens. “With the TARDIS.”

 ********  
“He’s a strange one,” Redfern said, eyes following the Doctor (John Smith—whatever) in a way Martha most certainly did not like.

Purposely clasping her hands in front of her and resisting (barely) the urge to touch the watch, Martha looked at the Matron stoically. She closed the door firmly behind them and stared the other woman down. “Oh?”

“Hmm, yes. Head in the clouds, that one,” Redfern added. “Tell me, Martha, who is he?”

“I’m sorry?” At least he hadn’t given Redfern his journal. That was something—right?

The Matron looked over her shoulder to the closed door of John Smith, a more than slightly longing look in her gaze that Martha did not like one damn bit. “It’s like he’s left the kettle on. Like he knows he has something to get back to, but he can’t remember what.”

Was that forced, pathetic laugh from her? Martha grimaced. “That’s just him.”

She wanted to literally wave Redfern’s words away but was afraid to untangle her fingers. She didn’t want to touch the watch—not only because she didn’t want the other woman to know she possessed it but also because she didn’t want to accidently transfer any of this to Rose.

“You arrived with him, didn’t you?” Redfern’s gaze sharpened on her but Martha grew up under the stern watchfulness of Francine Jones. Joan Redfern’s condescending glare paled compared to her own mother. “He found you employment here at the school, isn’t that right?”

“I used to work for the family.” Martha repeated the same line she’d used on Jenny, the Headmaster, half the other teachers who bothered to realize she was even there, and even John Smith once when he was in one of his Doctor-fogs, prattling on about void and holes in the universe. “He just sort of inherited me.”

Redfern sniffed. “Well, I’d be careful. If you don’t mind my saying, you sometimes seem a little familiar with him. Best remember your position.”

“He mourns his wife,” Martha said, probably a tad more acerbic than necessary.

But she’d grown protective over Rose. Once the Doctor told her Rose wasn’t dead but trapped in another universe, he shared many stories of their adventures together. So many, Martha felt as if she knew Rose. Even if half their conversations were probably in Martha’s mind.

She liked the Doctor’s wife, even more so now that she, herself, ‘talked’ to Rose through the watch. And now that that (horribly embarrassing) misunderstanding about availability and interest had been cleared up, Martha found a wonderful friend in the Doctor.

She’d protect them both with her life.

“There’s something to be said for companionship,” Redfern murmured in what was no doubt not meant to be heard.

Martha stiffened. “Give it up, Matron. John Smith will mourn Rose for a hundred, a thousand years. I promise you, he’ll never remarry.”

Redfern looked at her, surprised, but Martha met her gaze defiantly. She was so very tired of being beaten down by this time and their entrenched prejudices of race and class. She hated it here and once the Doctor was fully restored, they’d be having words.

“You sound very sure of that, Martha.” She sniffed and stepped away. “Especially considering your _position_.”

Martha laughed and walked away from the woman. “I’m positive,” she said over her shoulder in a brilliant display of insubordination. “Especially _given_ my position.”

Which sounded dirtier than she’d meant it to, but Martha knew the other woman wouldn’t realize that. Well…hoped Redfern wouldn’t, at least!

Luckily, Nurse Redfern, for all she was an arrogant, prejudiced woman with no understanding of equality or acceptance, understood John’s mourning and they’d attended the local dance as friends. Martha hadn’t told Rose that and hoped the other woman never discovered it. It served no purpose, though Martha supposed John probably did deserve companionship—just not romance.

Martha was unbelievably grateful she kept the watch on her and it hadn’t got lost somewhere in John Smith’s room or who the hell knew where else. Because the Family found them.

In the end, Martha convinced a disbelieving, highly agitated, and frankly frightened John Smith to open the watch.

“Rose.”

 _“What?”_ He demanded in a voice far more reminiscent of the Doctor than John. For that matter, of the stuttering emotionally breaking John currently sitting beside her in the abandoned cottage, Redfern looking on in surprise. _“What did you say?”_

He towered over her, furiously angry. Redfern gasped and stepped back, and Martha wanted to crow, but she forced herself to meet John’s eyes instead. (The Doctor’s terrible fury blazed in those eyes.)

“Open the watch,” she repeated. “Then you’ll be able to talk to Rose again.”

Fingers tangled tight on her lap, Martha swallowed and hoped John didn’t misunderstand her words. She’d chosen them carefully, despite their race from the hall to this cottage.

“What are you playing at, Martha Jones?” he demanded. But his fingers clenched on the watch. “Using my dead wife to—t-to—”

“No!” Martha rose, horrified. “No, I’d never!” She swallowed and tried to moderate her voice. “Look, the Doctor married Rose, but they’re…separated. Physically separated at the moment through no fault or wish of their own.”

John’s eyes narrowed at her and Martha wondered if this had been the right track to try. Too late now, no going back. “They still talk to each other, they’re connected. And they still love each other.”

Martha nodded to the watch. “When I hold that, I could hear them—they spoke to me as clearly as you and I are talking right now.” She stepped forward, not entirely certain if she planned to snatch the watch from John Smith and open it herself or protect it, and her friends, from the scared Human in front of her.

“They love each other very much, Mr. Smith. As much as you love Rose. Open that watch, and you’ll have your Rose back. I promise you.”

John’s gaze tore from hers and stared at the watch, that awed hope she sometimes saw on the Doctor’s face now shining on his. She thought she should say more, maybe convince him some other way, but his thumb caressed the latch.

“My Rose. My hearts.”

John opened the watch.

John Smith opened the watch, Doctor destroyed the Family—she didn’t ask and didn’t want to know—and Martha kept the watch.


	6. …find a way

**_…find a way_ **

“Mum and Pete are taking little Tony to Broadchurch this weekend,” Rose told him.

“You’re not going?” The Doctor asked, looking at her askance. “Where’s Broadchurch?”

“Little beach town in West Bay, Dorset.” Rose paused then rushed on. “I…I might go. There’s not much left to do at Torchwood with the canon, and Mickey—well, Micks convinced me that spending time with them while I can might be the best thing.”

The Doctor did his very best not to let his jealousy bleed through their link. He tried, really. He gave his success rate as maybe 68%. Rose didn’t hit him but she didn’t look at him, either. No, she kept her head on his chest, fingers running lightly through the hairs covering it.

“How’s his Gran?” He didn’t want to talk about Mickey Smith in their bedroom as they lay in bed, drowsy and content and naked, but they promised never to hold back, not to keep secrets while they were separated.

More than that, he knew something bothered Rose. The Doctor didn’t know if it was their separation, the lack of progress on the cannon, or loneliness.

The same loneliness that choked him and made him contemplate desperate things—like dismantling the dead Daleks in a 1930 New York sewer and using whatever he could from them to punch through the Void. They did it, they broke through and with a few tweaks he could as well. After all, he was far smarter than a _Dalek_.

He hadn’t. Well, all right, he _had_ dismantled them. He’d taken them apart with cold precision and destroyed the cavern they’d used for their hideous experiments.

But he hadn’t punched through the Void.

The TARDIS somehow alerted Martha who lectured him on destroying the universe and demanded to speak to Rose. Not the first or last time that had happened. And Rose. His beloved, his hearts…

He held her tighter, his own grief and loneliness swelling through him.

Or maybe it was hers.

If asking after a beach trip or Mickey’s Gran helped Rose, then that’s what he’d do. He had to be there for her, even if it was to talk about vacation plans with the family and her best mate. Plans he couldn’t participate in.

“They moved into the mansion. Rita-Ann wasn’t too sure of that, she remembered this world’s Pete and Jackie and, of course, heard all the gossip. Everyone heard about Jackie’s death.” She paused and sighed, and the Doctor ran his fingers through her hair, hoping that small movement, the slight press of his fingers on her scalp, soothed her. “But Mickey convinced her. Best place for her. Best place for all of us. And it’s nice, having Mickey around.”

“So, Broadchurch, eh? Nice place?”

“So I hear. Sleepy little town, but it’ll be nice to get away.”

The Doctor kissed her and tugged her closer to him. He loved telepathic sex with Rose, but he missed touching her physical body as badly as he missed sharing their adventures.

“We’re heading to Cardiff,” the Doctor told her.

Rose rubbed her leg over his, head on his chest, and kissed the spot between his hearts. “Going to refill the TARDIS?”

“She deserves it. Doesn’t need it often, but after being powered down for the three months I hid from the Family and then being caught by the Angels when we were separated...” The Doctor shuddered and tightened his hold on her.

“Almost had to take out a mortgage,” Rose teased. But she kissed him gently and cupped his face. “Whatever would you have done?”

The Doctor caught her gaze and held her hand to his cheek. “Bad enough that flat had curtains.”

“Didn’t have carpets at least.” Rose lay her head back on his chest and held him tight. “And you had Martha. I’m glad she was with you—she’s good.”

“She’s a star, Martha Jones is.”

“Shame we can’t communicate through the watch anymore.” Rose sighed, though he didn’t feel her soft breath on his chest. The loss cut through him. “I miss being a part of your life.”

“You are my life.”

The Doctor swallowed and shuddered, pushing his loneliness and fear as far back into the screaming pit of darkness he carried with him. She didn’t need that. She needed him. His support, his love, his telling her of how he spent his day even if it was wandering through marketplaces with Martha looking for elusive TARDIS parts.

“I don’t need you two ganging up on me again!” He pulled her even closer. He’d give a regeneration for Rose to be in the same universe, galaxy, planet, TARDIS, room with him, she and Martha teasing him.

They were both right when they told him that his plan to evade the family wasn’t his best. Being with Rose in the watch greyed out a portion of their link; in a way it was fantastic, being with her all the time. As if they hadn’t been separated.

However it wasn’t the same, and him being John Smith had killed a lot of people and ruined an entire village. Not to mention how he’d hurt Joan Redfern. And Martha. 

“It’s impossible now, without my mind in there. No way to connect the two of you.”

“No, I know. Still, it was nice having a friend…” Rose trailed off and the Doctor looked down at her.

She never talked about it, but then the Doctor knew everything that went on in Rose’s mind. She was lonely in the other universe. Achingly so. Not only because she missed him but because that world treated her like an interloper.

Half of Torchwood thought she was a vacuous daddy’s girl bleeding money from Pete—of course half of the UK thought she was a vacuous daddy’s girl who resurfaced as Pete Tyler’s daughter to bleed him of money.

It didn’t matter how smart she was or how uninterested in money she was. It didn’t matter she donated her Torchwood salary to President Harriet Jones’s charity, Feed the United Kingdom. It also didn’t matter that Jackie made a miraculous return from the dead and that she completely embraced Rose as their daughter. (A convoluted story the Vitex PR department had a hell of a time spinning.)

Other than the handful of dimension canon scientists and technicians assigned to work with her, ostensibly to study the feasibility of interdimensional travel and the impact on the environment, both Earth’s and the universe’s, Rose only spoke with Mickey and Jake. At least she had them, and for that the Doctor had never been more grateful to Mr. Mickey.

“How go the jumper calculations?” He asked, changing the subject.

Rose shrugged. “Still at a standstill. Not because it won’t work,” she amended and kissed where his right heart beat beneath her touch. “You and Mickey both agree on the calculations, which—” she raised her head and glared at him—“I never want to go through again. Had a migraine for a week, I did, having the pair of ya go back and forth on dimensional coordinates verses galactical verses Earth Prime.” She shuddered and scowled. “No, those pinpricks in the Void walls aren’t big enough.”

Neither said those pinpricks might never be big enough for her to jump through. Neither had to. They both knew the risks. For now, it didn’t matter. She’d been trapped a year there, already.

Not enough time for anyone to notice the changes in her. Not yet. But then he hadn’t even realized Bad Wolf changed her to begin with. It’d taken months and months; only after she and the TARDIS merged again to fly the ship to pre-Revolutionary France had either of them realized anything had changed in Rose.

“The TARDIS is still scanning,” he promised. And his amazing ship hummed insistently in his head, promising she was, in fact, looking hard for any way to reunite the three of them.

“I know.” Rose sniffed back tears and the Doctor moved just enough to cradle her face in his hands. To show her, as tenderly as possible, the depth of his love for her.

“Don’t cry, my hearts,” he begged. “Please don’t cry.”

“I miss you.” She looked up and grinned at the ceiling. “I miss you, too, darling.”

The TARDIS preened, but Rose’s voice broke and the Doctor couldn’t even roll his eyes at the pair of them. All he could do was blink back his own tears, his own grief, and hold his wife close.

Clung to her might’ve been a better descriptor.

“We won’t be in Cardiff long,” he told her, kissing her gently. “Any suggestions for our next trip?”

“Have you taken Martha to that asteroid bazar?” Rose wound her arms around his neck and slid her leg over his hip. The Doctor couldn’t feel her tears on his chest and hate that more than he loathed the fact she cried. Unable to say anything around the lump in his own throat, he held her closer. “The one with the eight-foot-tall troubadours in that anti-gravity well?”

“Herschel Asteroid.” He nodded in agreement.

“The one discovered by the first English female astronomer, yeah?”

“Yup!”

“Take her there. I think she’ll like it. Lots to see, good ice cream, too.”

They never made it to Herschel Asteroid. They didn’t even last long in Cardiff. The Doctor tried to joke about no one ever expecting Jack Harkness, but it fell flat.

“Hello again.” The Doctor frowned down at the body as Martha raced inside the TARDIS for the medical kit she insisted on keeping handy after a small (very slight) problem with Daivander Stinger Bugs which most definitely was not his fault! “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Here we go.” Martha pushed him out of the way and knelt beside Jack. “Get out of the way. It’s a bit odd, though. Not very hundred trillion. That coat’s more like World War Two.”

“I think he came with us,” he said and wondered how he could keep this from Rose.

She slept now, he had carefully calculated his and Martha’s trips so he could spend the maximum amount of time with Rose in their telepathic world. Rose needed her sleep, she pushed herself to develop the dimension cannon, and he was loathed to deprive her because he was lonely.

“How do you mean, from Earth?” Martha squinted up at him.

“Friend of mine,” the Doctor was forced to admit. Martha frowned. “Used to travel with me, back in the old days.”

“With Rose?” Martha asked softly.

His gaze jerked from Jack’s body to her, though he really didn’t see Martha. He didn’t see this planet or Jack or even care. He saw the three of them, Team TARDIS Rose had called them. “Yeah. We—before. The other me—we traveled together.”

“Oh.” Martha nodded and the Doctor was suddenly relieved he’d told her about regeneration. Especially since Jack might or might not know about it, and either way this barren land wasn’t the place to describe what happened.

“But he’s—I’m sorry,” Martha whispered. “There’s no heartbeat. There’s nothing. He’s dead.”

Of course Jack wasn’t and when he woke up, he scared ten years off Martha. The Doctor, uncomfortable, sad, and desperately trying to figure out how to tell Rose, couldn’t even grin.

“Nice to meet you, Martha Jones.” Jack winked. The Doctor did roll his eyes then.

“Doctor.” Jack stood and helped Martha up as well.

“Captain.”

He tried not to watch Martha as he and Jack exchanged what could only be called forced polite hellos. Not even all that polite. 

“Just got to ask. The Battle of Canary Wharf. I saw the list of the dead. It said Rose Tyler.”

His hearts squeezed and for a moment his world stopped. The Doctor frantically reached out for Rose, despite her slumber, and for a moment—a lifetime—held her close. “Oh, no! Sorry, she’s alive.”

Stunned, Jack’s façade fell and his smile bloomed. “You’re kidding!”

“Parallel world.” The words cut through him as surely as any sword. “Safe and sound. And Mickey, and her mother.”

“Oh, yes!” Jack hugged him and the Doctor let him. And for a moment, reveled in the lie. That he could find Rose any time he wanted to. That he could see her whenever the fancy took hold of him—

As simple as crossing a bridge.

“Wait a minute.” Jack pulled back and squinted at him.

“Yes,” Martha said and stood between them, allowing the Doctor distance and he seriously wanted to fall to her feet in gratitude. “Great reunion and all,” she interrupted. “But we’re a hundred trillion years in the future. Let’s explore, eh?”

It wasn’t until they were in the silo, with Jack in the radiation chamber that the Doctor admitted what he knew Jack wanted to know.

“You married her,” Jack said, stunned. “Even knowing—?”

“I—yeah.” He and Rose had only told Jackie about what Bad Wolf had done to her, how opening the Heart of the TARDIS and looking into the Vortex fundamentally altered her, increasing her longevity, her healing, her overall health.

Once it became clear to both of them he couldn’t pilot the TARDIS through the remaining gaps in the Void, Rose finally told Mickey who just nodded and shrugged. “Yeah, that don’t surprise me none,” he’d said and they returned to their cannon work.

“She’s not just in the other universe, Jack.” Each word chipped at what little composure he maintained outside his and Rose’s telepathic bedroom. He hadn’t been in their real, physical, bedroom since losing her. “I can’t reach her. The walls closed after the Time War and it was only because the Cybermen punched through that the gaps opened in the first place. She’s trapped there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Yeah. He was, too.

“What happened?” Jack asked, and his tone caught the Doctor. Lived through the entirety of the 20th century—yeah, Jack knew all about loss and loneliness. Grief. Even waiting a hundred years to see Rose again, Jack mourned her as if they met for tea only yesterday.

So, the Doctor told him—Bad Wolf, merging with the TARDIS, flying back to save him. Them.

“If you’re married…” Jack let the sentence trail off. “Oh. I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Yeah.” He repeated. “How could I say no to her?” the Doctor whispered. “She was everything to me.” He sniffed, looked away from Jack. “Still is.”

And then all hell broke loose.

The Doctor grabbed Jack’s wrist and flicked through the sonic’s settings as quickly as possible. They needed to leave this place before either the riot reached them, the atmospheric shell dissolved, or the Master decided not to take any chances and return to kill him anyway. Freezing the TARDIS’s controls wouldn’t last long, not on another Time Lord, but the Doctor knew his beloved ship wouldn’t let someone like the Master break into her systems.

They landed hard, with Rose screaming in his head and that sickening feeling of transporting through the Vortex minus a TARDIS making him dizzy. Rose railed at him, fists beating against his chest for not only lying to her about Jack but about her part in his change.

“My hearts.” He grabbed her hands and held her close as she spat at him, tears streaking her beautiful face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I couldn’t—”

“There’s no excuse, Doctor,” she said, hard and flat and too silent for anything other than furious anger. “You lied to me after promising me never to do so. After telling me that sharing a bond opened up everything you were to another.”

“I—yes. I did. You’re right, there’s no excuse.” He took a breath, though that did nothing but allow him to taste the air. “I buried it deep, far too deep for you to find, and I did it on purpose.” Jaw clenched, he met her gaze. “And I did it because I’m a coward. I ran from Jack because he’s wrong, time-wise, yes, but you’re right. I could’ve returned.”

“Why didn’t you?” she demanded. “Any time you could’ve said, we traveled for months together before we found out about Bad Wolf—and then for a year or so after that! **_WHY?_** ”

He ran his hand through is hair—now wasn’t the time for this conversation and he knew it, but he’d lied to his wife, his bond mate.

“I was afraid!” he shouted, more at himself than her. “I’d kept it from you for so long and then I didn’t know how to tell you. I was terrified you’d—” he cut himself off.

Rose crossed her arms over her chest. “That I’d what?”

“That you wouldn’t forgive me for being more concerned over you, over keeping you safe. I was regenerating, Rose, and you’d just looked into the Heart of the TARDIS. Forgive me for being more concerned for you than Jack.”

“And later?”

He swallowed and closed his eyes, the weight of his lies caving his chest inward. “I didn’t know how to tell you. Even when I promised never to keep anything from you, you believed me because it was the truth. By then—by then,” he said softer, “I’d buried Jack and what happened to him so far back I meant every word.”

“The TARDIS is chiming in my head.” She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight. Pulling back, Rose kissed him fiercely, hungrily. “We are by no means finished with his, mister.” She pecked his lips and stepped out of his arms. “But do what you need to do to stop the Master.”

“I love you, my hearts.”

Rose nodded. “I know. I love you, too, Doctor, even when I’m furious with you.”

The Doctor opened his eyes and found himself on a street with Jack and Martha—no. Martha wasn’t there.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted, looking pale and worried. “The Vortex Manipulators work on multiple people when everyone is holding on, and I know she was.”

The Doctor felt sick—if Martha let go, she could be floating in the Vortex. He had no way of tracking her, no way of finding her if she was lost.

“She’s all right, Doctor.”

“Rose?”

“She’s in the TARDIS. We’ll look after her.”

“Rose says Martha is in the TARDIS.” He looked at Jack, who looked confusedly intrigued, and shrugged. “At least she’s safe.”


	7. …protect you with my last breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: One mention of rape (the Master and Lucy) nothing graphic.

_**…protect you with my last breath** _

Rose rubbed her temples. Her head pounded and her brain felt as if it tore in two—the Doctor landed in one time and Martha used the TARDIS to communicate with her in another time. And that was something else; the TARDIS sounded sickly, off. Wrong. Rose didn’t understand and though the TARDIS tried to let her know, their bond didn’t work like that, with words and phrases.

Maybe it had to do with the image Martha described, the broken, dark interior of the ship.

“You have the watch?” Rose asked, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. It didn’t help her head. “Take the knife from the Doctor’s tool bag and scrape a little of the coral from any of the TARDIS’s struts.”

“This isn’t going to hurt Her?” Martha asked, voice shaking.

“It’s Her plan,” Rose tried to assure her friend. “Whether it does or not, I think it’s necessary.”

“What’s wrong?” Martha asked though the TARDIS assured Rose she did as instructed. “You don’t sound well. Are you sick?”

Rose snorted but it hurt and ended on a gasping moan of pain. “Headache. You and the Doctor are in different times, and you’re both trying to talk to me at once.”

“Does it have anything to do with the TARDIS and why She looks like this?” Martha sighed. “There. I have TARDIS coral scrapings in the watch. This’ll help me communicate with you, yes?”

“According to the TARDIS.” Rose whimpered and tried to block out the Doctor while she spoke to Martha, or telepathically spoke to her, but he insisted she stop speaking to Martha and take care of herself. “Hold on.”

Even gritting her teeth ached, and Rose carefully focused on her husband, whom she really wanted to hit right then, and tried to reassure him.

“Stop screaming,” she snapped, or snapped as well as she could considering the pain in her head. “The TARDIS and I are trying to help Martha.”

“Why didn’t she jump with us?” he demanded, but softened his voice and withdrew slightly from her head. It didn’t ease the pain, but Rose appreciated the effort.

“I don’t know!” She stopped and tried to relax her shoulders and neck, but the pain remained. “It was the TARDIS. She wanted Martha someplace else and that someplace else was in Her a couple days in your future.”

That sounded dirtier than she meant. Oh well. Rose didn’t have the energy to even snicker.

“The timelines are all messed up.”

Rose could _see_ him running his hands through his hair. Any other day, she’d want to do that. Today, she just wanted to stop talking to so many people in her head. Two was bad enough, adding Martha in and Rose wasn’t so sure she’d survive.

“Not messed up, but in flux.” The Doctor blew out a breath then winced. “And it’s not just Jack’s presence that is causing that.”

However much she wanted to ask about that—what happened to Jack, what she’d done to him—Rose had other concerns. “If Martha looks at the TARDIS databanks, can she tell you what happened and you can fix it?”

“No. The TARDIS is there, in that timeline, and since She specifically rerouted Martha there, it means the timelines are set.”

“Like a fixed point?” Rose asked her husband. Then, to Martha, “Don’t open the doors. Not yet. I’m trying to figure this all out.”

“What am I supposed to do then? How am I supposed to protect my family?” Martha snapped. “Sorry.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.” But she paused. “Is it?”

“I’m in another universe,” Rose shot back. “I wish we could create a three-way so I didn’t need to switch back and forth.”

Martha laughed. “Sorry, but I don’t see the Doctor like that.”

Rose did snicker then, the Doctor, on the other hand—she felt his blush through their link. “Oi! I’ll have you know, I’m very foxy.”

“I meant,” Martha inserted, “because you and the TARDIS are connected.”

“Oh.” Rose paused, but she couldn’t think and really just wanted to cry. “Don’t think so. But if the TARDIS interfered with your jump, then She knows something. Look around, is anything out of place?”

“No, well, nothing more than what I already told you.” Martha blew out a breath and Rose knew she wanted to check on her family. She wished there was a way to reassure her friend, but Rose was trapped in another universe. “Looks like someone went through Her pretty badly, tore apart Her center console and reconnected it in a hodgepodge of wires.”

“Check the other rooms. Yours, the library, the wardrobe room, the kitchens. If the Master did something to the TARDIS, She might’ve protected other areas, kept them from him.” Rose wasn’t sure how, but it was her best guess based on the single fact Martha now stood in the TARDIS and not three days ago with the Doctor and Jack.

“Let me know what you find.” Rose blew out a breath. “Now. Doctor. Let’s work this out.”

“Close your eyes, Rose.” His voice lowered, layered with that extra haunting bit she always associated with their telepathic world. “Imagine our bedroom, the view of the galaxy out the windows.”

Rose did as he instructed and when she opened her eyes, he stood behind her. His long fingers dug into her shoulders and back, easing the knots there.

“How does this work?” She sighed into his touch. “However it does, I don’t care. Just don’t stop.”

He kissed the back of her neck. “Jack and I are going to try and stop the Master and whatever his plan is. But I don’t think it’ll work, since the TARDIS interrupted our jump and took Martha.” He blew out a breath but didn’t stop her massage. “If She did that, then whatever we do here doesn’t work.”

“Martha’s searching for clues as to what the TARDIS wants from her. Or wants her to do.” Rose whimpered again, flashes coming through even as the TARDIS tried to stop them. “Oh.”

The Doctor’s fingers stilled. “Oh?”

“She’s trying to tell me something—or hide something from me.” Rose frowned but it hurt too much so instead leaned against her husband’s stomach. “Don’t stop.”

He obediently resumed his massage, long fingers pressing to strategic parts of her skull. “Your bond with Her might be strained, I’m surprised it hasn’t given you migraines before now.”

“It’s not that.” Rose sighed. “Not only that. I think—I think the Master tried something.”

Once more the Doctor’s fingers stilled. His entire body did. “What?” he demanded, very soft and very deadly.

“I think he tried to open the Heart of the TARDIS.”

The Doctor’s fingers clenched on her head and Rose whimpered. “Sorry.” He dropped a kiss on her head and cradled her to him. “I’m sorry, my hearts.”

She reached up and clasped his hand. “What was it you about a Time Lord absorbing the Vortex?”

“He’d become a god.” Behind her, the Doctor shuddered. “An angry god—vengeful.”

“How do you know? Has it happened before?”

They moved, how exactly Rose didn’t know. Usually they moved in their telepathic grotto the same as in real life, physically switching position or walking to a new room or something else completely physical. But one minute she rested her head against the Doctor’s stomach, the next he held her tightly on their bed, cradling her.

Taking comfort from her.

“Doctor?”

Her head eased, and when she met his gaze Rose saw absolute terror in his eyes. “Rumors. Myths. Legends. The Other—” his voice caught and he shuddered at the mere name— “The Other ran experiments. Not much of his work remains—” another shudder— “but what little does implies those experiments have to do with the absorption of the Vortex.”

“So a Time Lord did absorb the Time Vortex.” Rose combed her fingers through his hair, hoping to focus him and calm him. If his mind calmed, hers would as well. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. Nothing exists on the outcome, nothing really on the experiment itself, it was millennia ago.” He met her gaze and shook as if to dispel those thoughts. Or were they memories? There was something in his mind… “Just rumors around the creation of Time Lord society, about the Other’s role in it and how he stopped Rassilon.”

“And you think the Master tried to replicate this mythological experiment?” No, there was something more there, something nagging at the back of her head.

“I don’t know. He knows those rumors as well as I do, and now that he knows a human absorbed the Vortex and lived to tell about it—” the Doctor shrugged, a restless, uncertain move. Rose held him closer.

“I only survived because the TARDIS allowed me to open Her Heart. We merged, there was no take over or anything like that.” It niggled there, trying to push to the forefront of her mind, but Rose couldn’t quite grasp it.

“He’s found us.”

Rose shot up. No longer did they lay in their bed but the real world bled through their bond. Martha screamed for her attention and the Doctor kissed her hard before disappearing. Rose whimpered and rested her head on her pillow. She wanted a hot compress for her eyes, but hadn’t the strength to stand and get it herself.

Shame her mum couldn’t read her mind and get one for her. Then again, it was probably for the best—Rose didn’t want Jackie reading her mind at all. 

********  
The Master may have caught him and Jack, but the Doctor knew Martha had managed to escape. In fact, judging by the sickly sound of his beloved TARDIS, he suspected She intercepted Martha to land in the exact moment the Master brought them to the Valiant. The Doctor didn’t know why and it probably did matter, even if the TARDIS rarely did anything without reason.

He tried to communicate with his ship, but their bond didn’t work like that. He didn’t want to ask Rose what happened with Martha, her headache had worsened and despite the desperate situation, he didn’t want to add to her pain.

“I love you, my Rose.”

Her presence in his mind strengthened until he imagined she stood before him. “Doctor, what are you doing?”

The Doctor didn’t look from the Master, despite the looming, if metaphorical, countdown. “He knows about you. Tried to destroy the TARDIS to open Her Heart, then tried to break into Her databanks and find out what happened to you.”

“He’s going to use me to get to you.” Her voice wavered then strengthened in righteous fury.

“He’s an expert manipulator, very good at telepathy, too.”

“Mesmerizing his victims, you mean,” Rose spat. “Let him try. If he couldn’t break through the TARDIS’s walls, he sure as hell can’t break through mine.”

“No, my hearts.” The Doctor used all his remaining strength from his aged body and stood before her as he was meant to look. He framed her face and kissed her softly. “But he can mine.”

“Don’t,” Rose snapped. “Don’t you dare!”

“I have to. I’ll keep you safe no matter what I have to do, you know that, Rose.”

“Doctor.” Her voice broke and he kissed her again.

“I love you. Keep Martha safe. Make sure she knows the plan.” He stepped back and grinned, heart breaking, mind already protesting. “I love you.”

With that he closed their bond. Hot needles tore through his mind, shredding each thought and he screamed in pain. Noise on the flight deck halted, replaced by the Master’s cursing. Good. That meant his old friend knew what happened and hadn’t counted on the Doctor shutting down his marital bond with Rose.

“Doc!” Jack called, frantic. “Doc!”

“What have you done?” The Master screamed.

“You won’t get to her,” the Doctor gasped, old fingers digging into his scalp. “You’ll never get to her. I won’t let you.”

The Master stormed over and kicked him. Well that was sure to bruise. “Let me in.” His fingers dug into the Doctor’s temples, but he was just strong enough to keep the Master out.

Funny, centuries of being in control of his own mind yet allowing space for the Time Lords vanished. An eternity of wishing they spoke in his mind again and now that one crouched before him all the Doctor wanted was to keep him out. 

“I win,” the Doctor hissed.

 ********  
“The stars are going out,” Rose told her friend.

Martha trudged across muddy French fields, long abandoned, a fierce wind slicing through her clothes. Rose felt her cold as if it were her own and wondered if that was the TARDIS’s doing or her own imagination.

“What do you mean.” Martha looked up and opened her mind enough to show Rose the sky above her. fires burnt in the distance, glowing along the horizon and an eerie silence settled over the fields. But the stars still shone from the night sky, same as always. “Is the Master destroying the stars, too?”

“I don’t know. But a couple amateur astronomers noticed it last week. Flooded the internet with their theories, started a panic.”

“Is that possible?” Martha huffed but kept walking. “I can’t feel my toes.”

“Find shelter, an abandoned house or cave.” Rose pleaded with the TARDIS to widen their connection so she could see what Martha did, but the watch didn’t work like that. It barely allowed them to communicate and then only like a faint phone connection. “If he used the TARDIS to create a paradox machine like the Doctor thinks, maybe he found a way to punch through dimensions.”

“And if he did that without another TARDIS,” Martha finished, “then he’s destroying not only this universe but all of them.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with the Doctor.” Rose laughed but her throat ached. She missed him desperately, and her head continually screamed at her that part of her had died. But she hadn’t been able to break through the barriers he’d erected.

Yet.

Martha snorted. “I’ve been listening to you and Mickey talk too much,” she corrected. “I don’t know how to shut off this connection unless I don’t physically touch the watch, and I’m terrified I’ll lose it if I don’t always have it on me.”

“Sorry.” Rose cringed. “I don’t know how to strengthen our connection so I can see more of your surroundings, and I sure don’t know how to turn off my outside conversations.” She looked at her friend, frowning at the computer screen, and grinned. Mickey looked up and blinked at her for a few moments.

“Martha?” He asked. Rose nodded. “Tell her hi.” Then went back to work.

To Martha she telepathically said, “Mickey says hi by the way. If we ever figure out how to jump into your universe without destroying the fabric of reality, we’re all going for drinks. Doctor’s treat.”

Martha laughed and finally spotted the looming shape of a chalet. “Always wanted to stay in one. Fancy French food, gilt mirrors, a staff waiting on me.” She snorted. “Hopefully it’s deserted. Maybe they have extra blankets.”

“Be careful,” Rose said and turned back to her own calculations. “The Master has to have his own soldiers running around, searching for you.”

“I’m sure he does. But he’s not getting between me and a warm blanket.” Martha sighed. “Not today at least.”

“Good luck, Martha.”

 ********  
Rose meditated, listening to the silence of her breathing, the steady thump of her heart. She slowly pushed Martha’s connection into a closet and, with a silent apology, closed the door. Hopefully nothing happened while she locked Martha in her metaphorical closet.

Martha stayed with a resistance group in Paris, hiding in a World War I bunker beneath the Champ de Mars. Currently asleep, Rose hoped her friend’s rest was nightmare free.

For the innumerable time since the Master aged the Doctor two months ago, Rose focused on the frayed tendrils of their bond. She carefully wove the strands together, elongating them with each pass. Well, it looked more like a braid than an unbreakable piece of rope, but she did her best.

Head throbbing, eyes aching, Rose worked, uncaring what happened around her. She’d taken to sleeping at Torchwood in a small, soundproof room off her lab. She couldn’t bear the ride to and from the building any more. The distance between her flat and Torchwood was too far—even at 3.5 kilometers—for her to survive.

Car rides made her nauseous, the moving scenery pierced her brain like hot pokers. Walking any distance longer than from the kitchen to loo weakened her. The Underground just hurt. Everything. Even her hair.

Rose didn’t know if it was the severed bond that made movement ache, or the length of time she and the Doctor had been separated, or something else altogether. But since the Doctor severed their bond, only cool, dimly lighted places eased her pain and then only slightly.

Now, she put all that behind her and concentrated on reconnecting them.

There.

A pinprick of light guided her way, and she gently worked the strands of their bond towards it. Rose knew the Doctor waited on the other side of that light. So did the Master. She’d be careful, she promised herself, the Doctor, the TARDIS, and just to be safe Martha and Mickey, too.

Rose didn’t know how powerful the Master’s telepathy was and had no desire to find out. 

********  
The Doctor gazed passively at the Master. Nearly four months passed since finding him again. Four months for him at least. The Master seemed to have made quite the name for himself in London in the last twenty-two months.

Rage burned through him, but he merely stared at his old friend. Enemy. In the past, it’d been easier to separate that line. Now, it blurred, and the Doctor found himself firmly on ‘the enemy’ side.

The Master increased Torchwood’s funding. When he’d found out about their charter to capture their most hated enemy, he’d increased their funding tenfold. That was how they’d been able to open the Void. He’d been, at least partially, responsible for the Battle at Canary Wharf.

“No? Nothing?” The Master sighed, his dramatic breath of air and flopped in the seat beside the Doctor’s wheelchair. “You used to be much more fun. Entertaining at least.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Oh, but I’m sure Rose will.” He grinned, and it turned the Doctor’s stomach. “I’m close, you know, to breaking through your little barriers. Really, Doctor,” the Master tutted. “You ought to have been more careful. Why anyone could read your mind with those flimsy things you call telepathic walls!”

“You’ll never find her,” the Doctor said confidently.

He felt Rose, though. Stronger with each passing day, and knew she worked to repair their bond. He loved her all the more for that, even if knowing once she did so she’d be that much closer to being a pawn of the Master’s. The Doctor couldn’t stop her, though. He hadn’t the strength to deny her that which they both longed for.

Completion.

The Master surged forward, hands braced on the wheelchair arms. “I will,” he spat, spittle coating his lips. “I’ll find her and break her.” He stood and smiled, gaze sliding over poor Lucy who looked more beaten down daily. “Maybe I’ll even punch through the dimensional walls and bring her back here.” His grin widened and the Doctor wanted to vomit. “And show her what a real Time Lord can do.”

An unnatural calmness settled over him, erasing his fury and soothing his mind. The Doctor smiled. “Try.”

Eyebrow quirked, the Master eyed him—caution, disdain, curiosity in his gaze. “Oh, I intend to!”

His smile pulled the aged skin of his face and the Doctor nearly laughed. “Other than the fact it’ll destroy both universes and start a chain reaction that could, conceivably, destroy the entire multiverse—including _you_ and we both know how you value your own life—you don’t know who you’re dealing with. _Master_.”

Leaning forward, his vow not to speak to the Master forgotten in the face of his threat to Rose, the Doctor laughed. It sounded weak to him, but something in it changed the way Koschi looked at him. Good.

“But please. Try. It’ll save me years of calculations.”

There.

He felt her right there on the edges of his consciousness, growing stronger even as he taunted the Master. The Doctor’s grin widened. Koschi stepped back.

Coward—any day. He may have once said that to the Dalek emperor, but the truth was the Master was far more the coward than he. The Doctor ran toward trouble, the Master away at the slightest hint his plan didn’t go the way he wished.

“Doctor?” Her voice came to him as if through a vast chamber, echoing repeatedly.

“I’m here, my Rose.” The Doctor settled back into his wheelchair and closed his eyes, effectively dismissing the Master. “I’m here my hearts.”

 ********  
“The stars are going out.”

It’d taken her another two weeks, her time, before Rose managed to strengthen her end of the bond enough to telepathically talk like they used to. She hadn’t figured out how to exclude Martha from the conversation, but the Doctor said that was because he wasn’t in the watch to buffer them.

Either way, Martha already knew about the vanishing stars. She had her own job and currently trudged across Eastern Europe, or what remained of Eastern Europe, spreading her story.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, alert as always.

“Where’s the Master?”

“I—I don’t know,” the Doctor lied.

Rose huffed. “He’s with Lucy, isn’t he.” Her voice hardened. “He’s raping her.”

“Yes.”

She felt his sickness over their bond as if it was her own, and bile coated the back of her throat. “How’s—how’s Jack? And Martha’s family?”

“Alive.”

“I’ll tell her when she wakes,” Rose promised, swallowing hard against the sickness and helplessness.

“What’s this about the stars?”

They weren’t in their telepathic haven, it was more a conversation across a static-y mobile line than anything, but he assured her the stronger their bond became the easier it’d be to share what they once did.

Good—Rose had a lot to yell at him for. Jack, breaking their bond, treating her like a liability instead of an asset. Jack.

“They’re vanishing. We don’t know why or what’s happening, even some of our allies are worried. No one knows what’s happening.” Rose blew out a breath. “With the stars disappearing entire systems are as well. Millions of beings—gone.”

“How is that even possible?” he demanded. “Stars don’t just vanish. They age and explode, or implode I guess. But the point is they don’t disappear! How do you know that’s what happened? That they vanished instead of burning out?”

“We didn’t at first,” she admitted, rolling her shoulders and relaxing now that the worst of her headache vanished. It was always easier when they were together. “But it’s happened to too many, too fast. One eighth of Earth’s sky is black now, starless.”

“How’s the jumper coming along?”

“Changing the subject?” she teased.

“No. Yes. I need to think about this. Stars don’t vanish, they don’t disappear, and they don’t do it as quickly as you said.”

“Could it be connected to your trip to Utopia? You said there weren’t any stars in the sky there.”

“The end of the universe.” The Doctor shook his head, she felt it rather than saw it, and wanted to run her fingers through his hair, just to feel him again. “Malcassairo. That was the name of the planet. One of the last habitable places according to the people there.”

“Does it have anything to do with the Paradox Machine?” Rose shuddered.

That was another aspect of her headache, the way the Master defiled the TARDIS. Luckily, he hadn’t realized how close she and the ship were, or Rose knew he’d have found another way to get to her besides trying to break through the Doctor’s telepathic barriers.

“Show me what you have. If the paradox is causing this, it’ll change some of your formulae. Is Mickey about?” The Doctor sounded chipper now, more involved. The last months had been hard, waiting for others to do what he knew needed to be done. “I’ll need him to run another test on the Cardiff rift, see if the readings have changed.”

“I’ll get him. He’s—he’s not too far from me these days.” Rose didn’t tell the Doctor how Mickey had all but moved into the lab as well, leaving for lunch and dinner with his Gran, who still stayed at the mansion, and doing that only when Jake or Malcolm Taylor could stay with her.

She appreciated their concern, and Jackie’s frequent visits, but hated being so weak. Hated the constant pounding headache, the vast emptiness still echoing in her head. The loneliness.

“We’ll figure this out,” the Doctor promised. “There’s got to be a way. I need you home, Rose.” His voice broke. “I miss you so much.”

“I’ll come back, Doctor,” Rose promised. “I swear.”


	8. ...survive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to Mrs. Bertucci who made this chapter better!

**_…survive_ **

“I think I figured it out.”

Rose blinked out of her headache-tired-overworked stupor and looked to Mickey. But he snored at his desk, head pillowed on his arms while Malcolm Taylor frowned at his white board, marker between his lips, hands and face covered in black and red ink.

“Rose?”

Rose blinked again and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Martha?”

“I’m sorry, I woke you.” Her friend sounded contrite, and Rose immediately shook her head. Well that was a mistake. One she didn’t want to make again.

“No. Well, yes. But it’s fine. I needed to be up anyway.”

Martha snorted. “In how many hours?”

Grimacing, Rose looked around for a glass to get water, and forced stiff, aching muscles to move. Her back creaked, her shoulders tensed, and her legs flopped like jelly. Wonderful. Tingling fingers, numb toes, pounding head—check, check, and check. Well, nothing changed in the last few hours.

“A couple more,” she admitted. “But you know I’m always here for you.”

“Yeah.” Martha was silent for a few minutes. “Did I tell you I heard what happened in Japan?”

Rose stilled, glass beneath the water cooler. “No.”

Even her telepathic voice dreaded the answer. Goosebumps danced along her skin and slithered down her spine.

“I was the only survivor.”

She closed her eyes and slid to the floor. The glass crashed to the tile, startling Mickey awake and Malcolm from his work. Rose barely noticed.

“I’m sorry.” She swallowed hard and wiped the tears she didn’t bother to stem. Mickey suddenly knelt beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Martha.”

“What happened?” Mickey demanded, face ashen, eyes wide.

Rose rested her head on his shoulder and grasped his hand. Aloud she said, “Martha’s alive. Nothing’s changed. I’ll tell you the rest later.”

Mickey held her and despite her heartache for her friend and the sickening knowledge the Master killed millions as indiscriminately as he blinked, Rose immediately returned to her telepathic conversation with Martha. “How did you hear?”

“The Master,” she spat. “He broadcast it worldwide. Said he destroyed Japan to get to me.”

“He’s going to be so disappointed when he finds out you lived.”

“Good,” Martha said so viciously Rose was surprised the word itself didn’t cut the Master.

“What was it you said when you woke me?” Rose asked, wiping her eyes and taking the tissues Malcolm offered.

“I figured it out. I know how he came to power. You said the Doctor had something to do with Harriet Jones’s abrupt and involuntary resignation, yeah?”

Rose sat up and nodded to her friends, they looked at her oddly—as if they didn’t believe her and Rose didn’t blame them—but they returned to their work. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know she spoke telepathically across universes to both the Doctor and Martha. They’d been in this room with her for the previous year. They knew.

“Yes.” She stood and searched for a broom to clean up her mess. “What about it?”

“If the Doctor caused her resignation, then there was an opening for Prime Minister. That was a year or so, linear time. But, if he brought back the TARDIS—he being the Master—then could the two overlapping TARDIS…es—what’s the plural of TARDIS?”

“I—” Rose blinked and stepped into the hall in search of a broom— “I don’t know. TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space, nothing about a ship. Time and Relative Dimension in Spaces?” She snickered and heard Martha do so as well, which was her entire point. Her friend needed a spark of humor. “Maybe TARDIS is plural? Time and Relative Dimension in Space Ship? So, it’d be TARDIS Ship? TARDIS Ships?”

Rose waved it off. She finally found a small cupboard with a broom and dustpan, a mop that didn’t look as if it’d ever been used, and hundreds of boxes of tissues. Boxes stacked to the ceiling, three-six-nine deep and twice that wide. Every box Torchwood ever bought looked as if it resided in this small cupboard.

“I don’t know,” Rose said and honestly didn’t know if it was in answer to Martha’s TARDIS question or the tissues. “I’ll ask her once I get back.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Martha sounded tired, emotionally drained and physically exhausted. It’d been nine months for her, nearly the one year she had to complete her circumnavigation of the world. Magellan had nothing on her. Magellan—Cook? Who was the first sailor to circumnavigate the world?

She wanted to ask the Doctor but they’d agreed she wouldn’t initiate contact. He’d open fully to her whenever he believed himself safe from a telepathic attack from the Master. At the moment, closed off their link.

“TARDIS—singular and plural,” Martha decided and returned to her theory. “Anyway, so if the Master brought back the TARDIS to the same time, would the Doctor be affected? You said he and the TARDIS are bonded, so would having the same TARDIS in two separate locations but the same time have affected him?”

Rose turned her back on the tissues and headed for her lab. It was a maze of barely lighted hallways in Sub Basement Thousand. She sighed and trudged back to the jumper room. It was only Sub Basement Ten, but the lift ride to the level took forever.

She and Mickey had argued that putting them so low within Torchwood Tower meant they had a better chance of destroying the tower, but Malcolm insisted, in the unlikelihood of a catastrophic event, the worst that’d happen was either Rose or Mickey—or whoever physically used the dimension jumper at that time—would be the only one to suffer. 

Pete denied their request and threatened to snitch on them to Jackie if anything did happen. For his ‘help’, Rose and Mickey threatened to blame it all on Malcom and make him the brunt of Jackie’s wrath.

“I mean it’s a good theory,” Rose agreed. “It’d explain a lot about that year, too,” she muttered. “But I’m sure the Doctor has crisscrossed his timeline more than once and he’s never mentioned anything about side effects.”

“That he knows of,” Martha added, then sighed. “Just a thought. I had a lot of time to think on the boat ride from Kumamoto to Hawai’i.”

“I’m sorry, Martha.” Rose leaned on the keycard-guarded door to her lab. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again.

She sniffed. “Not your fault. And they’re not dead.” Her voice broke. “Not really. The people I made friends with, the ones who protected me at the cost of their own lives. The ones who smuggled me off Kyushu Island—I’ll make sure they don’t remember any of this. The Doctor’s plan will work.”

Rose straightened, reinvigorated by her friend’s strength. “Yes. Yes, it will. You’re right, Martha.” She pushed open the door and cleaned up the broken glass. “When the Doctor opens our link again, I’ll ask about your family. I don’t know how long it’s been since he last told me about them, but it’ll be the first thing I ask.”

“Thank you,” Martha said, voice weaker. “Any word on Leo?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no. He escaped but good.” Rose grinned and dumped the glass into the rubbish. “The Master is still searching for him, I know he taunts everyone about how he found Leo and killed him, but there’s no body. The Doctor believes the Master is lying, trying to break your parents. I don’t think anyone can find Leo Jones or his family.”

“Good.” Martha let out a long breath. “Good. Now then,” she said in a chipper change of subject. “Tell me about the test jump. Did it work?”

“If by worked you mean did I jump into the right universe—no. Well,” Rose hedged, “maybe. Mickey thinks it was, but it wasn’t Cardiff. Was in the middle of a marketplace of some sort, I don’t know where—was only there a minute, barely got my bearings before the jumper pulled me back.”

“If Mickey’s calculations are anything like the Doctor’s, that doesn’t surprise me.”

Rose snickered and looked to Mickey who had resumed his computer calculations, Malcolm periodically yelling corrections at him.

“I’m going to tell him you said that.”

“Go ahead. With any luck by the time I return to London you’ll be on this side of the Void.”

“Martha Jones, you’re one optimistic woman.”

“I have to be. The world is burning, anything else isn’t an option.”

 ********  
“Don’t jump.”

Rose stared at him. She and the Doctor stood in the TARDIS’s console room, the normally soothing hum of the ship now a weak sound that skipped. The sound slashed through her and pierced her skull.

The location, as much as she loved every inch of the TARDIS, did nothing for her, either. Rose wanted to be in their bedroom, or their grotto, or someplace soothing and comforting. Since reestablishing their bond, or as much as possible given the distance between them, and keeping their renewed communication secret from the Master, the console room became their default locale.

Now, tired, aching, depressed, Rose stared at her husband. “What?”

“I want you to,” the Doctor hurried to say and wrapped his arms around her. The feeling was weak, as if it really were a telepathic projection through the Void and nothing more. “But if you jump before Martha reverses time, you’ll just be pulled back to the other universe.”

“Even if I’m on the Valiant?” Rose leaned back and met his gaze, torn between anger and fear and dread and depression and loneliness. “You said you wanted Martha on the ship when time reverses so she’d remember what happened.”

“If I could have all of them forget, I would.” His hands tightened on her back, but he almost instantly loosened them. “Francine, Clive, Tish—they don’t deserve any of this.”

“If they forget, they won’t have learned,” Rose whispered. “Shouldn’t that be their choice?” Her mind raced with possibilities. “We’re refining the coordinates, Malcolm and Mickey think they have it. They think my next jump will be…back.”

“And the stars?” He framed her face, brushing hair off her cheeks. “What about them?”

“We—me, Martha, Mickey, and Malcolm—think it has to do with the Master’s paradox.”

“Possible.” The Doctor looked up, tongue behind his teeth in his classic thinking position. “I don’t have any other explanation. But why are the stars disappearing in your universe, too?”

“If he—” Rose licked her lips— “if he succeeded. If Martha—if she doesn’t…he threatened to punch through the universes, yeah?”

The Doctor stilled, face pale in the sickly light from the TARDIS. His hands dropped from her arms and everything in him screamed in defiance though he spoke not a word.

“No.”

“You don’t think—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I won’t let that happen. Martha will succeed and she will be back on the Valiant in time, and I swear to you, Rose. I swear the Master will not succeed. I won’t let him.”

Rose grabbed his hand, but their connection weakened. “Doctor!” She pushed through his reticence and forced him to solidify their bond. “Don’t you dare! You hear me? Don’t you do something you’ll regret.”

His eyes caught hers, the swirling anger of a thousand storms. “I won’t regret it. If he’s not stopped now, I see it—if I don’t stop him, no one will. He’ll return again and again and again.”

“Doctor!”

He kissed her forehead and wrapped her in telepathic love. “I love you, my hearts. And to keep you safe I’ll do whatever I need to. Understand?”

“Don’t,” Rose insisted, fear stealing her breath and making her shake. “There’s another way.”

“Not this time.”

 ********  
“He’s hoping when time reverses, you don’t remember any of this.” Mickey snorted. “Like to see the TARDIS let him get away with that.”

She almost smiled. “He can’t hide it from me.” But she remembered how he’d hid Jack. “Not this. He thinks he can, but I won’t let him.”

“He’s trying to protect you, Rose.” Mickey handed her a cup of herbal tea and she pressed the hot mug to her pounding temples. It helped for a minute, but never long enough.

“There’s a difference between protecting me and lying to me.” She met Mickey’s gaze and saw his resignation there. “And he’s wrong.”

Mickey kissed the top of her head and nodded. “But with time reversed and the bond reasserted, you’ll be all right then?” She nodded and he sighed. “Good. In that case, make sure both the Doctor and Martha know all the progress we’ve made here. I don’t fancy doing all this work again.”

Rose smiled. “You won’t remember doing it.”

He glowered at her. “I’ll remember.”

She stood, kissed Mickey’s cheek and turned to her small room. She had some thinking to do, and a good meditation always helped.

Rose decided to listen to the Doctor, Martha, and Mickey. They insisted it was for the best to remain on this side of the Void until time reversed and the Year of Hell was forgotten by all but a few.

He didn’t fool her, she knew what he was about. Rose didn’t know if Martha understood, but the look on Mickey’s face told her he knew the Doctor better than the Doctor probably wanted.

So Rose pushed herself to leave her lab and spend time with Jackie, Tony, and Pete. Her head still hurt like someone stabbed her with a pickaxe and motion made her nauseous, but spending time with her family helped her heart and eased her loneliness.

Both the Doctor and TARDIS believed this Year of Hell would reverse across all dimensions once the paradox broke. She needed to spend time with her family while she could before jumping back, but the migraines and motion sickness made that difficult.

Even weak, tiring easily, and unable to tolerate the louder of Tony’s toys, Rose struggle through it all.

And then came the end.

Rose hunched over the toilet, Jackie holding her hair back and Tony curled at her side. The Master did something to the Doctor, Rose didn’t know what, the Doctor refused to say, but in the aftermath, his psychic barriers weakened. They had been for a while as he integrated himself into the Archangel Matrix.

Matrix—that sounded familiar, but the harder Rose tried to place the word, the harder her head pounded.

“He’s there,” she mumbled.

“Who is, sweetheart?” Jackie ran a flannel beneath the water and held the cool cloth to the back of Rose’s neck.

“The Master. He’s there. Trying to break through the Doctor’s mind.”

“How’s that?” Jackie offered her a glass of flat fizzy drink. “I thought he was trying to break into the TARDIS, like you did only not.”

Rose didn’t bother correcting her mum. Jackie’s explanation was close enough. She debated the drink then took it, sipping the flat beverage, too drained to even grimace. At least when she next vomited she’d have something in her stomach.

“He wants to get to me.” She met Jackie’s gaze and, though her arms wobbled, pulled a worried Tony onto her lap. “Thinks he can and by doing so he’ll control the Doctor.”

Jackie scoffed. “Does he know what you did to yourself?” Her voice remained low but used the same worry-angry-resigned tone she used when Rose first admitted what happened. Seemed a lifetime ago now. “Does he have any idea the power of that ship of the Doctors?”

“He’s not sane.” Rose rocked Tony, partly for his benefit, partly for hers. The motion soothed the both of them. She looked up and met Jackie’s soft gaze. “I’m afraid the Doctor’s going to kill him.”

“Good.”

Rose jerked and Tony whimpered. “Mum!”

“Rose, I’m sorry he’s the Doctor’s friend—or used to be. But sometimes friends go bad. If he doesn’t kill this Master, and honestly what kind of ridiculous psychological problem does he have to call himself that!”

Jackie slid to the floor and leaned against the sink. She brushed Rose’s hair off her forehead and rested her hand on Tony’s back.

“He’s a danger to Earth.” Jackie sighed. “He’s dangerous to the whole universe—all the universes. You know that, Rose.”

“He’s the only other Time Lord who survived the War, Mum.” Rose closed her eyes and rested her cheek on Tony’s head. His warm little body helped the shivers now wracking hers.

“And how did he survive?” Jackie snorted. “Ran away he did. Coward that he was. No. If the Doctor doesn’t…end it all,” she added tactfully, “then what’s to say this Master won’t return? Again and again and again.”

“The Doctor’ll have another Time Lord,” Rose insisted. “He won’t be alone.”

“Rose!” Jackie’s loud snap startled both Rose and Tony, who whimpered from his nap. “Don’t you dare talk about yourself like that. You think you aren’t enough? You think the Doctor needs another Time Lord to not be alone? What about Martha? And Sarah Jane, hmm?”

Rose opened her mouth but Jackie ignored her.

“I won’t have you talking about yourself as if you’re less than a psycho who thinks destroying the Earth is the way to come back from the dead.” Jackie huffed. “You already found a way back to Himself, and I know you’ll go as soon as it’s safe.” She sniffed back tears. “I wish we had more time, but I know what it’s like to miss the one you love.” Jackie hesitated then nodded. “You just remember, you’re good enough for the Doctor. Too good if you ask me.”

Rose smiled weakly at the same words her mum used when she and the Doctor told Jackie what Rose had done as Bad Wolf. Well, Bad Wolf and their subsequent bonding. It’d been hard to tell if Jackie was more annoyed over what Rose had done to herself as Bad Wolf or that she and the Doctor married without her there.

Still a tossup, as far as Rose could see.

“Now come on.” Jackie stood and took Tony before helping Rose to stand as well. “Let’s get the pair of ya to bed. You can nap with Tony then we’ll have dinner in the back bedroom.”

They’d rearranged the bedroom nearest Rose’s room in the mansion as their new dining room when Rose moved back in. It was small, quiet, and dark. Perfect for her current condition.

“How long do we have?” Jackie whispered as she carried Tony into the main bedroom.

“Still a few months,” Rose promised. “Few weeks for Martha to return to London then when time reverses the Doctor will have to go over all the advances we’ve made so the jumper can work.”

“We’ve time then.”

Rose stopped her mum just as Jackie turned for the door. “As Bad Wolf, I saw a lot—everything. If there’s a way back here, I saw that, too. Or I created one. I won’t be gone forever, Mum. I promise.”

Jackie smiled and sniffed back tears. “Get some rest, sweetheart. We’ll take what time we have and enjoy it to the fullest.”

 ********  
Time reversed. The Doctor didn’t kill the Master, but when poor Lucy shot him, he also didn’t do anything to stop her. As he, Jack, Martha, Francine, Clive, and Tish watched the Master die, the Doctor reached out for Rose.

“You’re okay,” he breathed.

“Course I am.” She kissed him. “What happened? One minute I had the migraine from hell, you and Martha were both shouting at me, and the next it felt as if that never happened.”

He took her, telepathically of course, in his arms and kissed her. “I’ll explain everything. I promise. First I have to burn the Master’s body.”

“What?” Rose pulled back. “Doctor what the hell happened? Wait. Wait…” she stared at him, wide-eyed. “What happened?” She shook her head even as he pulled back. “Just…take Jack with you. Martha, too. All the Jones’s.”

“What?” The Doctor narrowed his eyes. No, he sensed no residual memory from the Year of Hell, as Rose and Mickey dubbed it. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I just know they need to be there.”

He took them. Rose had been right, they’d needed to be there as much as he had. It wasn’t closure, not really, but it was a start. When the Doctor would’ve left, when he would’ve trusted the pyre to burn itself out and the Master—his oldest friend and greatest enemy—destroyed, he stayed because they needed to.

Jack found the ring. “This didn’t burn.” He tossed it at the Doctor. “Time Lord metal doesn’t burn in Earth fire?”

The Doctor stared at it for a moment, then his fist clenched around it. “No.” He cleared his throat and raised his head to look at—at his _friends_. “Thanks.”

“A piece of your home world.” It was Tish who said it, her weary voice soft and understanding.

“Yeah.” His fingers dug into his palm, tighter and tighter around the ring. The Gallifreyan ring that housed the Master’s consciousness. The ring he missed and would’ve left.

“Let’s go home.” Clive stepped back as the fire burned itself out. They’d stood there for hours and hours. “I need a shower.”

Martha laughed, a short, hard sound. “Yeah. Sounds great. But there are some people I have to see first.”

The Doctor took Clive, Francine, and Tish home where they immediately called Leo. Then he, Jack, and Martha traveled the world and visited those who had helped Martha on her walk. Hundreds from every country. She cried when she saw them and they didn’t recognize her, but Rose pointed out to him that they were happy tears.

“I knew they’d forget,” Martha said, weeks later, as Jack handed her a cup of tea. “I’m glad they did. I’m glad they’re still alive.”

“But you’re sorry they won’t remember you.” Jack sat next to her and nodded, staring at the Doctor. “That’s what happens to legends, Martha. The story lives on even if the people themselves are forgotten.”

“I’ll miss talking to Rose, too.” She continued to carry the watch, though now that the TARDIS was healthy again, it didn’t work as a transit to speak with Rose any more. “Kinda got used to having her always there to talk to.”

The Doctor pushed off the counter and crossed to the table. “She misses you, too.”

“She remembers?” Jack demanded.

“No.” The Doctor tugged his ear. “Not really. Not like we do. But a part of her does, the part connected to the TARDIS. She has echoes of memories and one of them is talking to Martha.”

“When is she coming back?” Martha asked, sipping her tea.

“Soon.” The Doctor grinned widely. “We have some things to discuss.” He looked at Jack and sighed. “She’s still mad at me, well mad again, for leaving you behind. Once I explain everything…then she’ll jump back.”

“Everything?” Jack asked sharply. “You’re going to tell her about the Master?”

“I promised.” The Doctor sighed, shoulders sagging. “I should’ve told her about you when we bonded, but I pushed what happened so far into the back of my mind, it never occurred to me. I promised I’d tell her everything.” He shifted, uncomfortable, and admitted, “Rose even made me promise to have Martha smack me if I didn’t.”

Martha laughed, her first real laugh since they landed in Cardiff a lifetime or two ago. It made the Doctor’s hearts swell. When Jack joined in, he relaxed and some of the tension knotting his shoulders eased.

“Come on.” Martha stood and rolled her shoulders. “Drop me off at Mum’s. I…I have to make sure they’re all right, you see.”

He stood as well and nodded. “I understand. What about you, Jack?”

“I spent a lot of time thinking about my team,” he admitted. “I have responsibilities. I need to get back. But let’s drop Martha off first. I want to say goodbye to them, too.”

“Rose,” the Doctor called out, “when I’m finished dropping Martha and Jack off, we’ll talk. I promise, my hearts.”

“We better.” She still sounded angry, but understanding, too. He’d told her a little—the basics about the paradox and time reversing—when he piloted the TARDIS for Martha’s round-the-world trip.

“Everything,” he promised. “It’s a lot, but whatever you want to know, it’s yours.”

“I know that, Doctor,” she sighed. “I knew that before we bonded. I don’t need to know every day of your lives, but I need to know why you kept what I’d done to Jack a secret. Before we bonded, after, it doesn’t matter. You lied every time I asked.”

“I know. And we’ll talk. Let me drop Martha and Jack off, then I’m all yours. Always.”

She snorted, but it was in amusement not anger. “You already are.”

He grinned as he set the coordinates. “Only yours, my hearts.”

The problem was, as soon as he dropped Martha off, he ran into his past body. The Doctor refused to even remember what Jack said to his previous self. He knew he blushed clear through that body and the next from all the innuendo.

And then there was the Titanic. After they took care of that, the Doctor finally dropped Jack off in Cardiff and parked the TARDIS in the Vortex.

“Now then,” he said and lay comfortably on their bed. “Let’s start at the very beginning.”

“A very good place to start,” Rose sang back.

The Doctor grinned and opened his mind to hers. “Let’s get you home, my hearts.”


	9. …find you

**_…find you_ **

“The jumper is on a five-minute delay,” Mickey needlessly reminded her.

Rose resisted rolling her eyes and nodded. They’d gone over this a hundred times at least. More if she counted the times they’d probably gone over it before Martha tricked the Master and the Year of Hell reversed.

Dr. Malcolm Taylor had been so fascinated by the paradox, it’d taken Jackie’s (rather loud) intervention to get him back on track.

And now, standing in Sub Basement Thousand (or Ten. Whatever.) with her family surrounding her, and the Doctor soothing her telepathically, Rose smoothed sweaty hands down her hips and forced a smile.

If all went according to plan—which was laughable as the Doctor created the plan and he was always more last minute save the day than long-term planning—this moment was it. The last moment she’d see her family. Rose hugged Mickey tight and swallowed tears.

She’d cried enough over the previous month to dry up her tears, but felt them welling again.

“Thanks, Micks.” She hugged him once more. “For everything.”

“You tell the Doctor to take care of you.” Mickey swallowed his own tears, forcibly reminding Rose of their last goodbye, on a London street surrounding by possibilities and dirigibles. He sniffed and kissed her cheek. “And if he doesn’t, you tell the TARDIS I said to kick his ass.”

Rose swiped her cheeks. Anticipation fluttered through her even as grief choked her. “I’ll do that,” she promised.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Jackie hugged her tight, even though they’d promised each other not to cry. It had been an empty promise and they’d both known that. “You take care. And if you can find a way to communicate, please—”

“I will, Mum.” Rose set her hands on Jackie’s shoulders. “You know I will.”

“And be happy, sweetheart.” Jackie sniffed again. “You hear me, Doctor?” She raised her voice as if that’d help the Doctor hear her through Rose’s end of their bond.

Rose didn’t bother correcting her, and Mickey laughed, a choked happy sound.

“You take care of Rose, or I’ll break down these walls and march through that Void myself!”

“That’s—that’s not how the Void works, Jackie,” the Doctor said. He sighed and bussed a telepathic kiss over Rose’s lips. “Of course, I’ll take care of you! What does she think? I’d marry you and not vow to take care of you for our forever?”

Rose giggled. “He will, Mum. You know he will. And I’ll take care of myself,” she added pointedly.

Jackie hugged her close again. “You better. I love you, sweetheart. Be happy.”

“I will be, Mum.”

Rose hugged Pete once more, closer to him now than she thought she’d ever be given his resistance to acknowledging her as his daughter. And Tony. Oh, she’d miss Tony. He sobbed, a gasping uncontrollable sound that tore at her. For being so young, he understood all too well what Rose was about to do.

“I love you, Tony,” she told him, fresh tears blurring her vision.

“Love Rosie.”

She kissed his cheek and breathed deeply. Maybe the Doctor had a way to unlock her memories from the Year of Hell and she’d at least have the chance to remember an extra eighteen months or so of Tony.

Rose stepped back. Remember all of them.

“I love you all.”

She pressed the button and the world disappeared.

Everything disappeared. Sight, sound, air. Pressure pushed against her chest harder and tighter and no matter how she tried to hold her breath or take a breath or remember how to breathe—

“Rose!”

She blinked and gasped and pressed a hand to her chest. Still there. Rose gasped again, huge lung-fulls of air, choking, wheezing.

“Rose!”

“Doctor?” Did she saw that aloud or telepathically? Didn’t matter, he knew. Heard her. Reached for her again, though not physically.

“Where are you?” Her legs buckled but she stood and looked around the dark street. Empty.

Back braced against the alleyway wall, she crept to the opening and peered at the sky. Zeppelins.

“Rose? The TARDIS isn’t finding you anywhere in Cardiff or on Earth. Where are you?” His voice sounded hopeful, cautious. She knew that feeling all too well.

“I’m—it didn’t work.” She swallowed back tears and straightened. It was their first try, after all. “I’m still in this world. Or a world with zeppelins at least.” She cleared her throat and tried to joke. “Not having a dirigible contest in London are ya?”

“No.” His voice cracked and suddenly Rose was drawn into their grotto. The Doctor wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek atop her head. “We’ll work it out, my hearts. I swear to you.”

“I know.” Rose heard the mournful hum of the TARDIS and the promise from the ship as well. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.” He drew back and kissed her. “More than ever.”

 ********  
“Jack called.” The Doctor lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “Something weird’s going on in London with a diet pill.”

“Diet pill? Weird?” She shivered and stepped closer, leaning her head on his arm as they walked through a fragrant, field, hundreds of flowers waving in the slight wind. “Define weird.”

“He didn’t know. UNIT spotted it, and now that he’s working with them, he agreed to check it out. Wants to know if I want to keep him company.”

“You don’t believe it.” Rose wrapped her other hand around his arm and kissed his shoulder. The sun warmed her and the breeze ruffled her hair, and being with him was perfect. Except they weren’t truly together. And that still hurt.

“That he needs company.” She didn’t need their bond to know her Doctor. “He’s worried about you. I’m sure Martha is, too.”

The Doctor sniffed. “Nothing to worry about. I’m find. Excellent. Peachy keen even.”

Rose laughed and looked up at him just in time to see his grimace. “You’re a peach, all right.”

He scowled down at her. “Nothing to worry about.”

“No?” She snorted and pulled him to a stop. “Then I’m all right, too.”

“Rose—”

“You can lie to Jack, you can lie to Martha, you can lie to Sarah Jane and Francine and whoever else you want. But you can’t lie to me.”

He rested his forehead against hers and shuddered. “I miss you. I really thought the changes we made would work. I memorized the coordinates, made sure they were the same as when you jumped through the very first time. The jumpers _worked_.”

“Yeah, but you said none of us know if I landed on our Earth or not. Plus,” and Rose really didn’t want to say it. “The stars aren’t going out here.”

Not anymore. Not like they had when the Master created the paradox.

“I—yeah.” He pulled back and took her hand again, and they continued their walk. “With the paradox, the walls might’ve broken down. Or…or he tore them down.”

“To get to me.” She licked her suddenly dry lips, but the Master was dead. Burned. Gone. “Now that he’s not destroying the multiverse, does that mean the walls are intact?”

“No.” But he said it far too quickly for Rose to believe him.

“Doctor.” She sighed.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Well, yes.”

“Yes, you do know or yes, the walls are intact again?”

His hand tightened around hers. “Yes, both.”

“What do we do now?” Rose leaned her head on his arm, unable to look at him. She knew, of course, had figured it out herself. She purposely hadn’t jumped when the walls remained intact—talk about suicide.

Then—snap! —the dimension jumpers came online.

“I should’ve jumped onto the Valiant.” A surge of ager choked her and Rose tried to block it from the Doctor, but knew it was useless. “I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

“Rose—” He stopped and turned her. A light breeze danced through the air, cooling her suddenly heated skin.

“I just—I wanted to protect you, my hearts. I didn’t want to see you there only for the paradox to reverse and you disappear.” His hand tightened on her shoulders. “I don’t know if you’d been pulled back or not. I just didn’t know.”

Rose raised her head to meet his gaze. Broken and glittering with tears he refused to shed. Her anger dissolved. Well, lessened. Because that might not’ve happened and being on the Valiant might’ve insulated her and kept her in that universe.

“I guess we’ll never know.”

“You will find a way back. I swear to you.” The Doctor kissed her. Rose tasted his frustration, his terror, his determination. His love.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and tangled her fingers in his hair. Neither needed words, verbal nor telepathic, to convey their love, their hope, she knew. She always knew. 

Slowly Rose ended the kiss. Even in their telepathic grotto she breathed heavily and needed a moment. The Doctor held her close, face buried in the crook of her neck and breathed her in.

“I love you.” His voice broke and Rose held him tighter. “I just—I need you, Rose. So much. I vowed to spend every day with you, my hearts. I mean to keep that vow.”

“I love you, too, my Doctor.” Rose tightened her hold for a heartbeat then pulled back and sniffed, smiling tremulously. “Go with Jack. It’ll do you good to get you out of Cardiff.”

 ********  
“Donna…Donna…that name sounds familiar.” Rose stared at her computer screen, only half listening to the Doctor’s rambling.

“The woman in her bridal gown who beamed into the TARDIS?”

Rose blinked and shook herself, easily slipping into the telepathic world. She had a lot of practice over her months and months in this universe. Not their grotto this time, nor even their bedroom, when she opened her eyes, Rose stepped into the Gallifrey gardens. Normally she’d take a moment and look around, soak in the Doctor’s home world and listen to him talk about life on his planet.

Today, he sat beneath a silver-leaved tree and stared out at the grassy field. Suit jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, legs stretched in front of him, hands limp on his lap.

“That Donna?” Rose shook her head and settled next to him, taking his hand as she did so.

He immediately twined his fingers with hers and held tight. Rose curled against his side—they both had problems accepting their separation, this physical distance between them. It tore them apart as much as it brought them together.

“She found me again, not sure how. When Jack and I were investigating that diet company for UNIT.”

“Wow, what are the odds of that?” Rose reached out to the TARDIS.

She felt the Doctor’s soothing presence in her mind, along her nerves, brushing her skin, settling in her heart. Always there, always a part of her. Deeper, a true, physical part of her, Rose felt the TARDIS. The ship thrummed in time to her heartbeat, a steady pulsing glow of acceptance and belonging.

 _Did you do that?_ Rose asked the TARDIS. _Did you allow Donna to find him?_

The TARDIS’s steady hum lightened, almost a laugh. Rose grinned, despite her constant heartache, and mentally kissed the TARDIS.

“Did you ask her to travel with you?” Rose tilted her head just enough to see him, but he’d leaned his head against the tree and closed his eyes.

“I didn’t.”

“Doctor!” Rose sat up and glared at him.

He opened his eyes, defensive. “I, well, I don’t want anyone with me. They’d only be a distraction.” He reached out and ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I have more important things to focus on.”

“Oh, Doctor.” Rose leaned into his touch, caught his hand and held it close to her. “You took Jack back to Cardiff, didn’t you.” She sighed. “And you parked on the rift again.”

“Of course, I did!” He yelled, eyes flashing with hurt and fury and defiance. “You think I was going to gallivant across the universe when we’re so close to—” He broke off.

Rose scrambled onto his lap, pulling him close, cradling him against her chest. Not for any erotic reason, but because she knew the beat of her heart often soothed him. If they were physically together—then of course this wouldn’t matter—skin-on-skin contact would also soothe him.

They didn’t have that, so Rose used what they did have.

His barriers completely dropped and she felt every shard of pain at their separation. Constant needles to his brain and hearts, magnified worse than hers due to his heightened telepathic sensitivity.

She took his pain and wrapped it in her love. He did the same for her, telepathically soothing her across dimensions.

“Doctor.” She pressed her lips to his head, holding him close to her heart. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It was different with Martha, we traveled and she understood—whenever you and I were together, Martha knew not to interrupt.”

“You don’t think Donna will understand?” Rose pulled back and studied him.

She brushed his now-flattened hair off his forehead and kissed him gently. The Doctor sniffed but didn’t look away. His hands tightened on her hips until she thought they’d bruise, telepathic touch or not. Rose didn’t move, didn’t even flinch.

It felt so good to feel again, even if it was what amounted to no more than a phantom pain.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and looked so miserable tears clogged her throat. “Does it matter?”

No. no, she supposed it didn’t. “What did Jack say?”

“Oh.” He waved it off. “Same old, I shouldn’t be alone.”

“You shouldn’t, Doctor.”

“I’m not.” He said it so evenly and so passionately, she stilled. “I have you. I have the TARDIS. I have Jack and his team, even if it is Torchwood. I have Martha. Even Francine called the other day,” he reminded her.

“Yeah.” She swallowed and settled next to him again, tugging him to the ground so they could lay together. “But that’s because she worried you might’ve gone off the deep end.”

The Doctor scoffed. “Me? Never!”

“Doctor.”

“I can’t again, Rose. Look what I did to the Jones family! I destroyed them. And Jack. Do you have any idea how many times the Master or one of his goons killed Jack? Every day, sometimes four or five times _a day_ for an entire year. And you. I can’t—you—”

She tightened her hold on him. “I know.” She nuzzled the crook of his neck. “I know, Doctor.”

 ********  
Each time Rose prepared to jump, her family watched. Each time she returned, unsuccessful, they let her grieve and rage in private.

The rest of Torchwood must’ve thought their director barmy, always traveling to Sub Basement Thousand (Ten. Fine.) But then of all the Torchwood staff, only Pete, Mickey, Malcom, and she knew what the really did down here.

“You be careful, sweetheart,” Jackie said as she had each time Rose prepared to jump.

“Rosie.” Tony lay his head on her shoulder and hugged her. “Love you.”

“I love you, too, Tony.” She kissed his head, as she did every time, and sniffed back tears.

Excitement, anticipation, sorrow, hope jumbled in her until she didn’t know what she felt. One deep breath. Lock eyes with Mickey. Hands fisted—no reason for that. Nod. Braced.

“Activate!” Mickey called.

Blackness.

 ********  
“Martha called.” The Doctor kissed down Rose’s spine, taking care to touch each vertebra.

He missed tasting his wife, missed her with a constant ache that never went away, never eased. After the Time War, he thought he knew what loneliness and loss felt like. How they ripped him apart, pounding into his brain with emptiness and guilt and constant recriminations.

Rose healed him.

When the universe tore her away, his grief tripled. Maybe there was some semblance of the universe—multiverse—that wanted him happy, because their bond hadn’t broken. As much as he needed her physically with him, spending time with her in their grotto or bedroom or wherever, eased that ache.

He hoped it did the same for her.

“How is she? Settling in at UNIT?” Rose looked over her bare shoulder. “Still grieving?”

“I think she’s better.” He rolled to the side and pressed his lips to her shoulder. “She sounded—settled.”

“Hmm.” Rose scooted over and rested her head on his chest, sighing slightly. “What did she want?”

“Something weird’s going on, said UNIT needed an expert.”

“Oh? Who’d they have in mind?”

“Oi!”

Her joyous laughter seeped into his veins and the Doctor grinned down at her.

“Get out of Cardiff, Doctor.” Rose’s smile disappeared, but she didn’t frown and he considered that a win. “I promise, I’ll never stop until I find you.”

 ********  
Rose leaned her head on Mickey’s shoulder as they watched the jumper recharge. Jackie and Pete sat on the couch in one corner, Tony dozing between them. Malcolm Taylor muttered to his calculations on the whiteboard and tried to give them privacy.

She wanted to tell him that was unnecessary—in all the months and months they worked together, even those from the Year of Hell she remembered only in snippets as if a long-ago dream, he’d become family.

But he blushed and stammered whenever she invited him to be part of their group. Still, Rose thought she saw a longing there and wondered about his personal life. He never talked of that, not of friends or family or love. She let it go; Rose understood all too well the longing for more, for something.

“It’s not going to work, is it.” She kept her voice low so no one but Mickey heard.

“It will.” He squeezed her hand but didn’t look at her. “All that Bad Wolf stuff you told me about. It’ll work. Sides.” He did pull back then and grinned at her. “I saw what you and the TARDIS did when we was on that spaceship. You’re connected and I don’t think even you realize how yet.”

“We never had the chance to really test it,” Rose admitted. She frowned and shrugged, but didn’t move from her position against Mickey’s arm. “I don’t think I ever told you what I saw that day. It was—” she shook her head— “I can’t describe it in words. But it was like I flew through the stars, outside my body.”

“Think that was the TARDIS?”

“Maybe. Probably. But I saw images of the Doctor and I, too.”

Of the two of them making love, swimming naked in that ocean with the mer-people or whoever they were. The ocean where nothing artificial was allowed and the first time she and the Doctor visited they’d declined to strip naked and swim.

“I don’t think they were just dreams or fantasies, Micks.” Rose met his gaze, determination and hope welling within her. “I think they were our future.”

The jumper beeped, signaling its finished cycle. Mickey squeezed her hand again, Rose felt her wedding ring dig into her fingers and embraced the reminder.

“Then let’s get going.” He stood and pulled her up with him. “You said the Doctor was on Earth, yeah? He’s helping Martha with that Sontaran thing?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

“Then let’s find him.”

 ********  
“Sure you don’t want one last trip?” The Doctor asked as he leaned against the console, ankles crossed, arms folded over his chest.

“Tempting.” Martha grinned.

Her eyes slid to Donna, who stood beside her looking alternating lost and proud for her part in today’s adventure. He hadn’t realized she started working with Jack, who introduced her to Martha and UNIT after the Adipose incident.

“How about it, Donna?” The Doctor, never one to acknowledge so large a hint, heard Rose’s voice encouraging him to travel again, even though he knew she wasn’t there.

Not right now, she’d given him space to stop the Sontaran threat and had jumped. He felt her travel through the Void—the lack and emptiness and vacant, hollow, barrenness of it all. His mind constantly reached for her, searching for her either here with a stronger connection or in the other world.

So far, he felt nothing and panic raced through him. Maybe a trip was what he needed. Take his mind off the lack of communication from Rose.

Maybe he needed to return to Cardiff and once more connect the TARDIS to Torchwood’s Rift Machine.

“You sure?” Donna eyed him shrewdly.

“Oh, sure.” He pushed off the console and turned to flip switches. “Just one trip. Be back before they know you’re gone! Martha, do us a favor and close—”

Which was when the TARDIS slammed the doors closed and took off on Her own.

And when, ten minutes later, he stared at a woman stepping out of a propagation machine.

“Well…” he tugged his ear, stunned and speechless and frantically trying to contact Rose. “She’s my daughter.”

“Oh, you’re in so much trouble, mister!” Martha snickered. “How’re you going to explain this?”

“Martha! It’s not funny.”

She looked at him, dark eyes serious. “No, it’s not. It’s assault, plain and simple. And I don’t know how I’d deal with this.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, taking his hand to examine the cut on the back of it. “But you are going to have some explaining to do!”

“What are you two talking about?” Donna demanded.

Martha opened her mouth but hesitated. The Doctor jerked his hand from her grip, desperately pleased they’d used his right hand, not his left. Not with his wedding ring. He didn’t know why, if it mattered or if he didn’t want Rose tainted by the nonconsensual force of this procreation, but he didn’t want his wife touched by these people.

“Nothing,” he snapped.

But then the Hath attacked, Martha was taken prisoner by them, Donna named Jenny, and they’d been arrested. Bloody fantastic.

“Rose?” Leaning against the wall in their cell, the Doctor closed his eyes and called out to his wife. “Please, my hearts, please answer me.”

Nothing.


	10. ...follow you anywhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The end. Well... the end of _this_ story but certainly not theirs! I hope you enjoy and thank you so much for reading.

**_…follow you anywhere_ **

The Doctor stretched his mind, searching for Rose. Nothing. She didn’t answer. The warmth of her mind didn’t reach for his, even across the Void. His mind was as cold and empty as after the Time War.

Worse.

Because he didn’t know what happened to Rose and didn’t know where she was and didn’t know if she was safe and—

“Spaceman!”

He looked up at Donna, panic clawing at his throat and mind a wild, feral beast. Rose! He needed Rose.

Shouldn’t have left Earth.  
He needed to open the Rift, full power, and bring her home.

The TARDIS, She’d taken him from Earth, from Cardiff and Norway and Rose. The instant they’d landed on this barren, war-torn, nothing of a pathetic planet, he’d lost contact with Rose. Fury welled within him.

His ship, his beloved ship had taken him from his only chance at bringing Rose across the Void. Safely across the Void.

He shouldn’t have left Earth.

“Doctor!” Donna’s voice, a scared whisper of sound jolted something in his mind.

“Donna?”

“They’re right behind us!” She hissed.

Who? What? He shook himself, blinked in the dark, industrial corridor and looked around.

“Get your head out of your arse, Doctor,” Donna growled, but the thread of fear hadn’t dissipated.

She’d been on the TARDIS when they’d taken off and though part of him (the Rose part) knew he should’ve taken her traveling, he hadn’t. Instead, he’d parked on the Cardiff Rift and worked day and night to find a way for Rose to return to him. And still Donna had been there when the TARDIS had taken off.

Why? 

“Captain Crazy is right behind us,” Donna warned.

Donna-mysteries aside, the Doctor nodded and pulled his mind, his cold, aching mind bereft of Rose, back to the situation at hand. He needed to save Donna and find Martha…and Jenny. He needed to figure out Jenny. Or what to do with Jenny—

Rose would yell at him for that sort of thinking. Except Rose wasn’t here. She was—she was gone. Missing.

He’d have a breakdown later. Right now he needed to save his friends. And his daughter.

Rose and Jenny—something in the Doctor shifted. He quite liked the idea of traveling with his wife and his daughter in the TARDIS.

And as they ran into the gardens, with the Breath of Life sitting there, and everything clicked into place, the Doctor’s mind reached for hers. “Rose? Where are you? Please answer me, my hearts.”

A thread. A tingle. Hope.

********  
Rose landed.

She stumbled to her knees and clutched her chest. Everything hurt. _Everything_. Her lungs gasped for air, her heart pounded as if it might burst. Her blood roared in her ears and her bones ached as if they’d been squeezed through the Void.

The Void.

She straightened, dizzy, and her knees weakened. Voices shouted at her, or around her, but she couldn’t understand them. A dull roar of sound. Then silence.

“I’ve got you.” The Doctor’s arms came around her and held her close. _“I’ve got you, my hearts.”_

Rose blinked and breathed deeper. Her arms, heavy and gelatinous, wrapped around his shoulders and she buried her nose in the crook of his neck. Yes. Home. Safe. She breathed in the Doctor’s scent and choked out his name.

“I’m here, Rose.” He pulled back, hands frantic on her cheeks as he brushed back her hair. He kissed her deeply, and his touch felt so real, solid, true, Rose cried.

“I made it.” She kissed him again, clutching him closer. “I made it!”

Rose leaned back and grinned up at him. She brushed her fingertips over his temples and let the all-too real presence of him bathe her mind. Whole. Complete. Mended.

“You came back.” His fingers touched her temples and he leaned his forehead against hers. “I knew you could. How? What changed?”

“Oh my God.” A voice off to the side startled Rose.

She looked over the Doctor’s shoulder to see a beautiful woman staring, opened-mouth, at her. Rose knew that voice. 

“Martha?”

She reached out to her friend, a woman she’d never physically met until now, and hugged her, one-armed. Rose refused to release the Doctor, couldn’t bear to let go of him, and might never.

“Oh, it’s good to see you!” Martha laughed and hugged her.

“That’s Rose?”

The Doctor turned, hand on her hip pulling her to his side, and for the first time Rose saw where she landed. The lush gardens reminded her of their gardens on the TARDIS, but there was a slight golden glow around the room. Rose’s stomach dropped.

“Is that—is that regeneration energy?” she demanded, terrified of the answer.

“What?” The Doctor turned to her and pressed his lips to her temple. Telepathically he said, _“No. Oh, no. That’s the breath of life. It’s terraforming the planet’s surface.”_

“Oh.” Rose released a breath and closed her eyes, leaning on his chest.

“This is Donna.” The Doctor nodded to the redhead who looked speechless.

“Donna!” Rose grinned, unable not to—she might grin for the rest of her very long life. She nodded to the other woman then craned her head to look at the Doctor. _“You said you weren’t traveling.”_

He shrugged, sheepish. “The TARDIS had other ideas.”

“Smart girl, our TARDIS.”

A young blonde woman stood next to Donna, watching Rose and the Doctor with an expectant expression. She raised her hand in a half-wave but said nothing. 

“And that’s—well, that’s Jenny.”

“Hi, Jenny.” Rose waved to the girl—well actually she was probably about the same age as Rose when she first ran away with the Doctor.

She caught the way the Doctor said Jenny’s name. She tilted her head and tried to catch his gaze, but he refused to meet it. He tugged his ear and looked lost.

_“Doctor?”_ she asked telepathically. _“What’s wrong?”_

She looked to her right and saw soldiers subduing an older man who grunted and struggled. Fish-like beings with a liquid container attached where a mouth might be helped subdue the one man. Jenny was dressed like the soldiers, and Rose assumed she was one of them but decided to help the Doctor with whatever happened here.

“There was this machine,” Martha began when the Doctor didn’t.

Rose frowned. She wasn’t supposed to frown during her first _decade_ back with the Doctor, let alone the first 10 minutes.

“These soldiers,” Donna added and waved at them, “they forced his hand into the machine.”

“It was forced,” Martha spat. “They held him at gunpoint.”

Panicked dread sat heavily in her stomach and Rose reached automatically for the Doctor. Back a matter of minutes, and already doing so felt as natural as before their separation.

_“Nothing like that, my hearts,”_ he promised, fingers brushing her temples again. _“She’s my daughter.”_

“Your what?” Rose blinked.

“This is freaky,” Donna said from very far away.

Rose shook her head to clear it, but the Doctor’s words echoed in time to her heartbeat. _Daughter. Daughter. Daughter._

“You get used to it,” Martha added to Donna. “Should’ve seen him on the TARDIS, staring into space while they talked. Or when he’d finish his conversation aloud and I had no idea what he was going on about!”

“I don’t understand,” Jenny added.

Rose snapped out of her shock. “Your daughter?” She looked from her husband to his child. Her head hurt and not from squeezing through the Void. “I talked to you like 20 minutes ago! You didn’t have a daughter then!”

“Twenty minutes?” He stared at her and Rose knew without him saying or even thinking, it’d been much longer than that for him.

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Doesn’t matter.”_ He squeezed her to him and pressed a kiss to her temple. _“You’re here now.”_

“So…daughter?” She repeated.

“It’s a long story,” the Doctor sighed. “Can we talk about it on the TARDIS?”

Rose only nodded.

“What about Jenny?” Donna demanded.

“She’s coming with us.” The Doctor’s hand tightened on her hip. _“Rose?”_

“Yeah. Course. Can’t leave her here.” Rose shook her head and smiled at Jenny who looked all sorts of awkward. Rose sympathized. “I’m Rose, by the way. This one here’s rubbish at introductions.”

“Are you two together?” Jenny asked as they exited the gardens.

“She’s my wife.”

Warmth bloomed in Rose’s chest and she grinned up at the Doctor. Nope, never going to stop smiling.

“Wife?” Jenny tilted her head and frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s like a—a mate,” Donna explained. “You promise to stay with one person for the rest of your life.”

“And Dad promised to stay with you?” Rose nodded to Jenny’s question and Jenny grinned.  
“Does that make you my mum?”

Rose stumbled and damn it all if her smile didn’t drop. “Uh…” She looked to the Doctor, completely at a loss. He opened his mouth but for once nothing emerged. “One thing at a time, yeah?”

********  
Hours later, after dropping off Martha and Donna to their respective homes, and promising to visit in a day or two their time, Rose and the Doctor lay in their bed, wrapped around each other. Jenny explored the TARDIS, who seemed thrilled with the new addition.

“So the TARDIS just took off on Her own?” Rose looked up at the vault ceiling and tilted her head, but the Old Girl gave nothing away.

“Jenny was the reason for the TARDIS bringing us there. Just…too soon.” He blew out a breath and shook his head, hand still rhythmically stroking her arm. “That created Jenny in the first place. Paradox.” His hand tightened on her arm. “An endless paradox—the TARDIS took us to the planet to find Jenny but landed us too soon, which created Jenny. Circular paradox.”

“That must be how I jumped through.” Rose leaned up on an elbow and looked down at him. She ran her hand over his chest. Warmth and love settled in her at being able to touch him again. “Everything feels so real now,” she whispered. “I know in our grotto we were together, and I could kiss you and touch you, but now.”

She lightly scratched her nails down his chest, felt as well as heard his intake of breath. The quiver of his belly as she moved lower. How his eyes darkened, his nose flared and Rose knew he scented her arousal.

“It’s weird,” she admitted. “I remember it all so vividly, like I touched you like this just yesterday. But it’s also new again, yeah?”

The Doctor caught her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her wedding ring. “If Jenny wasn’t here, I’d never let you out of this bed. I want to reacquaint myself with every lovely inch of your body. I want to make love to you until neither of us can move.”

She grinned, tongue poking at the side of her lips. “I’m not complaining.”

Rose kissed him, a slow, soft, desperate-tinged kiss that reminded her of all she had and those long, desolate months she’d missed. Straddling his hips, she rocked against him and straightened, breaking the kiss. His hands gripped her hips, tighter than she remembered—or was that how he always held her? Had making love via telepathy lessened his touch?

“What were you saying?” he asked, voice low and growly.

She shivered and arched against him. “Hmmm?”

“About jumping through?”

She giggled. “Only you get turned on by scientific talk.”

He grinned, a dark, dirty smirk that made Rose shiver. “Talk science to me,” he sang.

She giggled again and shook her head. “If the TARDIS created a circular paradox that created Jenny, then did that weaken the walls enough for me to jump through? I mean we always aimed for Cardiff and the Rift because of the weakness in dimensional walls over it, but clearly I didn’t land there. Or in this universe’s Bad Wolf Bay.”

“Hmm, no.” His hands slipped up her belly and though the hungry look in his eyes didn’t lessen, Rose knew he focused on her question. “You didn’t, did you. Did the TARDIS create a paradox? Yes. Was it enough to widen the pinprick between universes so you could jump through? Apparently.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“The stars aren’t going out like they were during—during that year.” His voice faltered and his fingers flexed on her hips. “Did time change? Was it the Master who caused the universe to end? There were no stars at the end of the universe, but there was life. How did they survive? How was any planet still intact? No sun means no gravity for planets to orbit. I don’t know.”

“Something else is coming?” Rose shivered and once more looked to the ceiling, but the TARDIS continued to hum Her normal, soothing, tone.

“Something else is always coming.” The Doctor’s voice hardened. “We’ll deal with it when it happens.” He drew her down and rolled them over. “For now, let’s enjoy what we have.”

“Aren’t you suddenly a glass half full kind of Time Lord.” Rose tangled her hands in his hair and wrapped her legs around his hips. “Sexy.”

He snorted and kissed her. “You came back to me, my hearts. I’ll believe in anything.” He framed her face with his hands and she felt his seriousness as much as his love. “But I’ll always believe in you.”

Rose, choked up on tears and gratitude and love, kissed him. She poured everything she was, all her love and hope into that kiss. She opened fully to him, body, mind, and soul. “I love you, Doctor. More than those words convey. I’ll always love you. Forever.”

“Forever.”

********  
Hours—or days—later, Rose stood with her Doctor in the console room, Jenny across from them. She grinned at the young woman, who looked excitedly nervous and bubbled in anticipation.

“Definitely your daughter,” she told her husband.

He only laughed, that happy grin lighting his face. _“Ours.”_

Rose nodded and grinned back, turning to Jenny. “Ready?”

“Oh, yes! Will there be running? Love the running.”

“There usually is.” Rose laughed.

“Jenny, you pull that one down.” The Doctor motioned to a lever. “Rose, you remember what to do?”

“Of course.”

“Handbrake off! Allons-y!”


End file.
